Creativity Campaign!

Since this is my first year with all of my students (new school), my goal with every grade has been to encourage creativity and risk-taking. I'm on a serious crusade to get my young artists to loosen up and to delete the word "perfect" from their art vocabulary.

At the start of the school year, I challenged my 6th grade students to create a work of art incorporating this quote from cartoonist Scott Adams: "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." We looked at various examples of designs that combine text and imagery, and then I set them loose. The motivation? One work of art would be chosen to be immortalized on posters and in other media promoting the visual art program at our school all year. I got some great entries, but the strongest, in my opinion, was this one: simple, well-designed, eye-catching, and it very successfully combines technique and text to illustrate the quote. (And everything was spelled correctly!)

Click to enlarge

Here's the poster I had printed up, which is now plastered all over the school. (LOVE Vistaprint!)

The students have really taken ownership of the program and are truly feeling like artists. I still have my non-risk-takers, but we're working on it. I plan to do this every year with a different focus. I'd love to have a very large collection of posters when I retire! :)