Week 6: Teaching Artist Union and School of the Future

Hi Everyone,

This Tuesday is another event in a year-long series of weekly conversations and exhibits in 2010 shedding light on examples of Plausible Artworlds.

This week we’ll be talking with Cassie Thronton and Chris Kennedy about two interrelated projects based in New York: Teaching Artist Union, and School of the Future.

About Teaching Artist Union
The Teaching Artist Union is composed of NYC artists for whom teaching is — or is part of — their creative practice. The Union seeks to define the role of the “teaching-artist” through developing a supportive community, drawing attention to the work produced in teaching situations, and advocating for the rights and needs of the teaching artist. The Union works in a wide range of environments, including non-profit arts organizations, schools, museums, and other agencies. Contending that art can invigorate, agitate, and reorient stale institutional habits, the Union wants to develop a lasting structure to sustain and promote the various manifestations of the Teaching Artist. The Union came into existence in the spring of 2009 as the only organization in NYC for and by Teaching Artists, undertaking projects to support and change the art and education landscapes that we live in.

About School of the Future
School of the Future is the launching pad for the art movement of education. This artist-run school focuses on teaching artists as “experts” in the study of information through performing and visual arts. Opening this July in Bushwick’s Sgt. Dougherty Park for a month of 24-hour programming, the school serves as the first site devoted to the resourcefulness and adaptability of teaching artists. Each curriculum developed for the school is an art project, making the school a group show. The projects will be designed to use art as a learning process that both takes into account and activates the site of the school.