Art 320:  Art, Education and Social Practice is a course I created with my colleague Sunny Spillane for the Foundations Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  This course explores the intersection between contemporary art, educational theory and social practice.

The first students to take this course facilitated a series of public workshops called: Spring Garden Open House.  This project explored the role of the artist as public educator and revealed various aspects of a street near UNCG's campus.

The students created a Guide Book you can download here: SPRING GARDEN OPEN HOUSE

This guide book acts as an educational resource, project documentation and a publication.  Each student wrote about their project, Topics include; what they want to show us, how the workshop functions, its relation to fields inside and outside of art and connections to educational theory.

Art 323 | Art, Education and Social Practice

We held our first class meeting at the gym.

We talked about art, school and the subtleties of a jump shot. We began asking a lot of questions about education.

And power And creativity And justice.

We kept digging. We walked a lot.

We explored neighborhoods. And smells

And unwanted weeds And bus stops

We unpacked educational theory. We looked closely at language. We analyzed media.

And audience And context And teakettles

We piled in a bus and left town.

We had coffee with museum educators.

We met with curators from major institutions And locals

And shop owners And hummus

We hacked doorstops to make them better. We made a book.

We created an artwork, just for you. And we wanted to share

And teach And empower

We created Spring Garden: Open House April 21, 2016

Lee Walton, Associate Professor of Art

University of North Carolina at Greensboro