Had the honor of appearing at the National Art Education Assosciation’s Art Education & Social Justice Conference in Baltimore last week.
I spoke about the Understanding Courage Project, a community project co-created by Curious City and based on the life of Claudette Colvin as outlined in the book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice by Phillip Hoose.
Curious City was happy to join Simon Adams, David Shennett (above), and Kelly McConnell from Maine College of Art as they presented their design of the art project at the center of Understanding Courage (UC). UC invited middle school students to create paintings reflecting on the life of Claudette Colvin and display them aboard a city bus. Claudette’s dual acts of courage as a 15-year-old girl in 1955 crippled segregation on US transportation.
There were many fine educators in the audience including Hiep Nguyen of the international art movement, Circle Painting who pointed out that although legal segregation is gone, there is still a separation of race and class in America that shows itself clearly aboard city buses.
