Curated Learning Exhibit

Final Project Guidelines 

The final project for this course is aimed at describing, synthesizing and evaluating your learning over the course of the quarter. Before you begin working, we recommend you glance back at how you responded to the Disability Freewrite prompt at the beginning of the quarter. 

As with all of the assignments for the course, this project is criterion-based and is intended to allow you a variety of ways to represent your own ideas, reflections and personal experiences with disability, art and education. Here, though, we are expecting you to look at the body of work you have done over the quarter, reflect on where you started at the beginning of the course, and represent your growth and change through both retrospective analysis of your work, and by commenting on the meaning of your learning through one or more aesthetic (arts-based) media.

The project will be created in part from the set of resources you have used or made throughout the course:

Part A: Text Excerpts

• Choose five text excerpts from the course readings that have been particularly significant to you. Excerpts must be cited specifically (either quoted or referenced by page number, video timestamp, etc.). These can be text excerpts you have previously used in your DWLs, or those you select from other Encounter or Exploration experiences.  For each text excerpt, write a short commentary ( a paragraph or so) about why you have chosen it, and how it relates to your learning in the course.
• Choose three excerpts from your own writing in the course. Excerpts must be cited specifically (quoted). These may be drawn from your DWLs, from your two Arts-Based Syntheses, from your Interact posts, or any other writing you may have done about your experiences in the course. Again, for each excerpt, write a short commentary in which you say why you chose that excerpt, and what it reflects about your learning in the course.

Part B: Arts-Based Synthesis #3

Reflect on your learning through the process of making an image. We define image broadly to include artistic products made through any medium (including but not limited to visual art, creative writing, music, dance, drama, etc.).

As Elliot Eisner writes, the arts demonstrate that our linguistic capacities do not define the limits of our cognition we know more than we can tell (Eisner, 1998, p. 45). We hope that you will see this as a space for creativity, risk-taking, and exploration. Try out your ideas. See what you discover.

We think about the three topics of this course, (dis)ability, education, and the arts, as overlapping and deeply interrelated, as visualized through the below venn diagram.

In Part B of this final assignment, we ask you to focus your thoughts on the overlap between all three circles. Produce an image reflecting your understanding of the intersection of (dis)ability, education, and the arts (THE RED AREA).

Consider how you understand the intersection of (dis)ability, education, and the arts as it relates to history, contemporary society, culture, and/or your own lived experiences.

After you have made your image, consider if you need to include a visual description (you will if your image has any visual components– see guidelines for writing a visual description here (Links to an external site.)). If you do, include it. 

Next, write a comprehensive artistic statement (~300 words) explaining your process (how and why you made what you made) and how you relate your image to your learning in the course (cite specific examples from coursework, including encounters, explorations, and interacts). In this statement, reference sketches, drafts, and notes from Arts-Based Syntheses #s 1 and 2 to think about and articulate the arc of your artistic process across the whole quarter.

To recap, your complete Final Part B will include 3 components: 

1. An image that represents your understanding of the intersection between (dis)ability, art, and education. Your image must: 
   • Be a creative, original work. You may incorporate course materials or images you’ve seen before, but bring them together in a new way. Take creative risks– rather than producing something you’ve made before or feel comfortable making, try something new and see what you learn. This could mean trying a new style, medium, etc. 
   • Represent critical thinking about course content. We should be able to see you working through ideas that you’ve developed in conversation with the authors we’ve read and the videos we’ve watched this quarter. 
2. A visual description for visual components of your image, to make your image accessible to anyone who may not be able to see the visual for any reason. If no parts of your image are visual (you typed a poem or recorded a song), you do not need to do this. Your visual description must: 
   • Be typed and uploaded as a text file, not written in pencil and uploaded as a photograph. This is so an e-reader can read your text out loud. 
   • Describe the content, aesthetic, and style of your image. For more information about how to do this, see these guidelines (also linked above). (Links to an external site.) 
3. An artistic statement. Your artistic statement must: 
   • Explain your process within the context of all 3 ABS assignments, including a detailed explanation of how and why you made what you made and how your artistic process grew and changed throughout the quarter. Use sketches and notes from ABS #1 and #2 to help you think about this. 
   • Connect your image with your learning in the course through specific citations of course content. Think of this as your chance to justify the “critical thinking” piece of your image. How do you justify the elements you included based on specific pieces that you read/ watched/ experienced? 
   • Include your reflections:
     • On what (if anything) you learned through the process of making your image. Did the process of making this image deepen and/or expand your understanding? If so, how? If not, that’s ok too. 
     • On the personal meaning(s) of your image. What does your image mean to you? What in your image matters most to you? Least? Do you see parts of yourself reflected in your image? Did you learn anything about yourself through creating it? If so, what? If not, that’s ok too. 

Don’t know where to start? Consider the following guiding questions: 

• • What have you learned about the relationship of (dis)ability, art, and education in this course through… the modules? your interact discussions? explorations? What of this learning has been most personally meaningful to you?
  • What does art enable us to see about disability? About our education system? What can we learn from disabled artists and students through their art (as opposed to any other medium) about… their lived experiences? their identity? our own experiences of disablement/ oppression, particularly in schools? our own identities? the nature of art and creativity? 
  • How does our education system construct disability? How does our education system construct what we believe to be “good art”? How are disabled artists pushing back on these ideas?
  • How are both art and education inclusive AND exclusive? Who gets included and who gets excluded from what spaces and why? Consider disability but also race and other intersecting identities.
  • What does school typically teach us? about the world? about ourselves? What do we want schools to teach young people? What role might the arts play in an “ideal” school? 
  • How am I complicit in constructing disability? How have I participated in its construction through my experiences in the education system? Through my judgments about what counts as “beautiful” or what counts as “art?”

Part C: Personal Statement

Write a personal statement (~200 words) reflecting on your learning in the course as a whole. Here, reflecting on your Disability Freewrite may be particularly useful. Make it personal, and consider the following questions:

• What has changed or stayed the same in your understanding, awareness, and personal experience with (dis)ability over this quarter?(consider what you felt about certain topics, any shifting of thoughts, any emotions, or socially reflexive reactions (guilt, ownership, accountability, etc.). 
• What have you learned this quarter about your own experiences and relationship with the arts and education?
• How do you imagine your experiences in the course might impact you in the future?  (You might consider this question in terms of your career aspirations, your ideas about yourself as a learner, or perhaps as a parent.)