Mia ( Minneapolis Institute of Art) - Krista Pearson - 4hrs
This past Friday, I met with Krista Pearson from the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts to discuss my shadowing this semester. We had coffee and discussed what I was interested in getting out of the shadowing—I’m personally interested in community based arts education, but I don’t feel I know one hundred percent what I am interested in yet, so we discussed that a little bit too. The next day, I came in for a workshop she was conducting on sign making. The workshop was a project responding to the photo show, Resistance, Protest, Resilience, a grouping of many types of protest photography. She showed guests around the gallery and then moved into a studio space downstairs where people were then encouraged to make their own protest signs. She was very careful not to tell people what to create, and not to create an example—something I found was important as well.
Most of the people who attended where older, most children who were there were there with parents and were uninterested in the project. Krista was able to easily engage them with drawing. The space facilitated easy discussion and there was a lot of easy conversation, I did notice that Krista seemed to be a connector between those. She would start a conversation with somebody, get them comfortable speaking in the space, and then move to another person. The facilitation of a comfortable work environment amongst older people who are unfamiliar with each other while creating something meaningful was really interesting to watch Krista manage so comfortably.
I will be shadowing Krista next Monday morning at Center school, I also contacted Urban Arts Academy a few weeks ago and will be meeting with Tamar and working on site this upcoming Monday.