Your Point of View- Students Seen, Heard and Valued

Cedaredge Middle School Art

Cedaredge, CO

Amount Requested: $2500

Donation Amount: $250

I am requesting $2,500 to contribute to the cost of funding a photography unit for 70 students each semester, 140 students over the course of the year.

I am reaching out to you for support to execute a dynamic photography project centered around; delayed gratification, examining the world around us and supporting students in feeling seen heard and valued. Students enrolled in my course spend almost an hour with me each afternoon exploring various art mediums and ideas. This year our theme is "art is everywhere" , encouraging young artists to look closely at objects, things and people around them. We cover; drawing, printmaking, ceramics, public art, sculpture etc. but the gratifying medium of photography is currently not accessible. My goals are lofty but the budget is slim! I need financial help to bring this meaningful project to our school.

I am proposing arming about 70 students each semester, 140 over the course of the school year with a disposable camera. I will guide them in lessons on observation, decision making, composition, lighting and other photography foundations to help each child build a TANGIBLE collection of works that they can critique and create an engaging display from and share with the school and local community.
Students grades 6,7, and 8th are rapidly developing self concepts and views on the world we inhabit. To help them develop a sense of place and see themselves as valuable members of community we must value their perspectives while affirming that their point of view is worthy of noticing and celebrating. I think this can be achieved by putting them behind a lease and asking them to show us what they think is worth capturing, their world and perspectives. A culminating student photography showcase would celebrate and share the outcome with our greater community.

In the past, I have done photography projects with middle school students and can testify that they absolutely love taking pictures. Photographs seem to be a natural visual language for teenagers! However, I quickly ran into a many of issues, the biggest being equitable access to cameras. The cameras we do have access to are on phones and that's just inherently problematic. Here are a few reasons its not appropriate to rely on camera phones; inequity- not every child has a phone, it is inappropriate to ask them to use something that we discourage being at school, there's not enough self control (at the middle school level) to have students only use the camera during class, let's keep social media and filters out of this, and so on and so forth. I believe the disposable camera to be the sensible solution.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration! ART IS EVERYWHERE!