Art Exchange Lesson Plan

Level: Grades 9-12

Duration: 1 hour, plus time for assessment/evaluation activity

About the Author: Grace Foran, The eQuality Project and Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts

This lesson plan is a joint project of MediaSmarts and The eQuality Project, a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

This lesson is part of USE, UNDERSTAND & CREATE: A Digital Literacy Framework for Canadian Schools.

Overview

The purpose of the lesson is to facilitate and develop youth art as a form of community engagement and give students the opportunity to explore their experiences with privacy and equality in networked spaces. Students will be presented with several scenarios related to experiences of privacy and (in)equality in networked spaces and how young people have used art to advocate for change. Students will be asked to develop an art project (mural, collage, recorded performances, face/body art, etc.) that they believe best reflects the issues that are important to them. Since the expertise and support to implement an art project vary from classroom to classroom, there are three options for completing this lesson: (i) students design and create their art projects; (ii) students develop a plan to produce an art project without actually creating it; and (iii) students are mentored by professional artists who help them design and implement their art projects.

Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• Understand key concepts of privacy and equality
• Reflect on art as a form of community engagement
• Create or design a work of art that promotes community engagement in relation to one of the topics discussed

This lesson and all associated documents (handouts, overheads, backgrounders) are available in an easy-print, pdf kit version.