Building Community Making History Collaborative Project
2007 | Washington, D.C.
PROJECT PARTNERS:
Using self-portraiture as a vehicle for peace and expression in Washington, D.C.
PROJECT
The Building Community Making History Collaborative Project was a multifaceted process that included the collaborative development and creation of an installation by the Duke Ellington School of the Arts community and staff from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Participants explored building community and making history through a number of contemplative, educational, and creative practices. Seven workshop and art making periods focused on portraiture served as multidisciplinary opportunities to create four collaborative artworks. The workshop exercises modeled the action of building community and resulted in objects that documented peace. Two of the works were permanently installed at Duke Ellington School of the Arts and two were shown at the National Portrait Gallery as a part of the exhibition Portraiture Now: Framing Memory, May 25, 2007-January 6, 2008.
THEME
By creating spaces for participants to express their individual selves in an inclusive and peaceful way, there was the creation of a loving community that highlighted the individual’s role in collective history.
CONCEPT
The first aspirations of the Building Community Making History collaboration were outlined thorough group phone meetings, regular email dialogue, and a visit to the National Portrait Gallery and Duke Ellington School months before the workshops together. A synthesis of preliminary educational, social, and logistical realities became the inspiration for the seven-day workshop curriculum, and subsequently the final four collaborative works. Through sequentially structured exercises, the use of group-generated rubrics, and peer-to-peer review methods, the participants themselves defined the conceptual intentions of the work and made the art objects. By each participant directing their learning and teaching based on material from previous workshops, the art highlighted the interconnectedness of the past, present, and future. This inclusive cycle of reflection, action, reflection in each workshop exemplified “the individual’s role in their collective history,” a theme of the National Portrait Gallery’s Portraiture Now: Framing Memory exhibition, of which this project was catalyzed. All of the activities for fun and growth in the process of creating the Building Community Making History Collaborative Project were occasions for collaboration.
METHOD
Each participant began by making photographs, drawings, and statements regarding community and peace. Outcomes from the first four workshops—including learning about digital media, drawing with nontraditional materials, and creative writing on artwork from upcoming National Portrait Gallery exhibitions—were converted into self-portraits by each participant on reflective paper. By creating a self-portrait, the individual was directly represented. By making and showing the self-portraits together, the participants magnified their voices in community. And by being presented on reflective material, the portraits showed the interconnectedness of everyone.
Participants were then invited to collaboratively project a series of drawings created from photos taken during previous workshops as well as images taken at Duke Ellington School that documented community and peace. These large main drawings were projected onto four large prepared polyester sheets 17.5’ x 4’ each, hung in the halls of Duke Ellington. The large, collaboratively drawn images accompanied a selection of quotes from the previous assignments that related to the theme of building community and peace. This initial transfer of smaller drawings to the large-scale works was a unifying experience that helped to connect participants deeply to the project as well as serving as an engine for interpersonal connection, healing, and joy.
In late January the Building Community Making History Collaborative Project crescendoed with a celebratory session of coloring, personal dialogue, and community connection. The Duke Ellington School of the Arts Community and staff from the National Portrait Gallery collaboratively colored drawings and text that had been generated and projected the previous days on to prepared polyester sheets hung in the school hallways over the reflective self-portraits on mirrored paper.
The final products were large collaboratively colored drawings of the Duke Ellington School community and National Portrait Gallery staff practicing peace, alongside a selection of large quotations hung over the reflective self-portraits. This project aimed to empower the entire school community by beautifying the Duke Ellington School and the National Portrait Gallery with artworks that featured images of the participants and their history, which they were directly involved in creating.
Day of Dialogue of Reflection
On the last day of the project, participants reconvened for guided writing and talking about the project and to share what they had learned about building community and peace. This group dialogue was a way to contemplate the experience more deeply, and complete the pedagogical cycle of “introduce, study, and recall” to enhance learning.