#art excursion

For this week's art activity we had to focus on an activity that went hand in hand with our major. In my case, I had to focus on how art and community health could correlate. As I was researching, I came across lots of murals and paintings that depicted community health and wellness but I wanted to do something different. This led me to realize that art does not have to be singular, regarding only drawing and painting, but instead I can focus on different structures of art.

Last semester I took an art class that revolved around focusing on art outside of the United States and I chose Mexico City. In my research, I came across an artist by the name of Pedro Reyes. He had an inspiring take on art. The piece or exhibition that he created was called "People's United Nation" or pUN for short. This artistic expression welcomed 193 regular citizens from their respected countries and throughout a few weekends, the delegates get to represent their countries in group activities. Essentially this event allows the delegates to speak on current or possible future issues that can occur in their country and in the groups the other delegates can help with coming up with solutions.

The art activity for this week can be either small and possible to complete in a week or large and takes more than a week to complete. So taking inspiration from Pedro Reyes's event, I would like to do something similar on a smaller scale but would take more than a week to accomplish. I have two possible scenarios, the first being an event where local schools decide on "student delegates" to represent their local communities. The second scenario is much larger in which the event would revolve around larger separate communities choosing local delegates, it could be local residents or someone in office, regardless of the scenario. The purpose would be to discuss the local disparities that affect the population of each respected community and come up with possible solutions. The difference would be that the school scenario would focus on the younger population and the community scenario would focus on the community as a whole. The event itself would only be one day.

This "activity" would take more than a week because of all the confirmation that must be met by multiple parties. Some approvals can take up to a month or longer to be confirmed. It would also require lots of resources such as a furnished venue to host the event, proposals to encourage discussion, willing delegates, approvals from parents and school boards if the first scenario is chosen, and information/data about each represented community so that accurate information will be discussed...etc. The research must be done to provide accurate proposals and information, meaning we would have to look into each community thoroughly. This art excursion would need many approvals and confirmation so depending on which scenario we would have to speak with multiple parties whether with the school district or the board of directors of a community. Because of the scale of this project, we would have problems in actually pulling it off. Getting willing delegates and approvals/ permission would also be an issue. Having inaccurate information/ misinformation could also hinder the reason for this event. To gauge the effectiveness of the event, a possible method would be pre/post tests of a community sample and see if there is a change from the solutions provided in the event if any. Time is a big issue here because the post-tests would have to be given at a proper time when enough time has passed to implement the solutions.