Learning Through Modern Art in Boston Classrooms

The Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Art|Play Project is hoping to inspire educators and students to integrate arts education into classroom learning with new resources and a spark of creativity.

The project, housed at Project Zero, recently launched a new Art|Play website with curriculum resources teachers can use to let students get creative while learning a bit about contemporary art history in the process.

“The intention behind it is just to give folks a starting point for how they can cultivate these sorts of creative opportunities in children and young people in whatever context they’re working in,” says Lecturer Louisa Penfold, Art|Play co-founder and faculty co-chair of HGSE's Arts and Learning Concentration. “And to kind of spark children’s and educators’ curiosity around these different amazing things that artists are doing.”

Penfold, along with Senior Lecturer (Emeritus) Steven Seidel, created the Art|Play project, a partnership between Project Zero, the Ed School, and Boston Public Schools that aims to better center arts in educational settings. The project’s website notes that while 88% of Americans believe that arts are an essential part of well-rounded education, research has shown a steady decline in access to arts education nationwide.

“Art|Play is a project looking at the integration of modern and contemporary arts practices into public school curriculum,” says Penfold. “It’s not just about showing kids artworks. It’s actually having kids engage in these creative processes of experimentation and tactile interactions with materials and asking questions. Inquiring into the unknown. Thinking about how we can position these different processes of learning within young children’s lives through the public school system.”

The activity packs offer a number of ways to get students thinking differently about art and its creation, along with examples of contemporary artists using similar methods to create their own works. Simple construction projects, sound sculptures, action painting, nature arrangements, light play, and nature constructions all help foster creativity, Penfold says, while limiting the burden on educators to source materials to execute the projects.

“All the Art|Play activities featured in the resources we’re sharing utilize these repurposed and recycled materials as part of the core part of the creative experience for kids,” says Penfold. “So thinking about how we can utilize repurposed materials, things we can find in the kitchen or in the garden or in the recycling bin and utilizing that in children’s art activities as opposed to buying things endlessly from a catalog.”

Penfold said the curriculum development focuses on three key areas: The importance of children’s interaction with materials, positioning contemporary artists with diverse backgrounds within the curriculum, and moving away from table-based crafts so students can learn with their full sensory systems.

The project also has a professional development aspect for teachers, many of whom are not deeply versed in the arts and may hesitate to incorporate arts into their curriculum.

“A really big issue in arts education, especially in early childhood, elementary school level is that these are teachers who are jacks of all trades,” says Penfold. “These are folks who are teaching everything, so not everyone has an MFA or a background in fine art.”

Instead, these projects require something all teachers have but are often not allowed to use: their own curiosity and creativity.

“What you often have are teachers who are really interested and curious but don’t necessarily have the time and resources to do all of this research around artists and how to set up these creative conditions for learning,” says Penfold. “So it’s about giving them these gentle touchpoints and starting points to be able to then take these ideas, adapt them to the children in the communities they work and live in, and then run with it.”

One curriculum activity called Focus on 4s, for example, features a video on cardboard construction that includes PDF guides for teachers and parents. While children explore concepts like size, shape, and form making 3D sculptures out of recycled cardboard, tape, clips and glue, the activity also connects with the creative practice of sculpturist Louise Nevelson.

The resources are available in English as well as Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and Art|Play hopes the translations will allow use of the materials across a variety of different communities and cultures.  

Penfold touted the collaborative effort the Art|Play project has had from the beginning, including many HGSE students working at Project Zero to research and design the curriculum and oversee professional development. Initially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Art|Play has partnered with Harvard Art Museums, the Smithsonian Learning Lab, and MoMA to utilize artists and archival materials to design its curriculum experiences. They’ve also worked closely with Boston Public Schools to develop the open-source curriculum.

With the launch of the website making the materials now available to the public, Penfold said the real excitement is in what’s ahead.

“It is really amazing to see how different educators and artists take these ideas and run with them,” says Penfold. “The intent is not that this is a one-size-fits-all, really directed way of doing children’s art education. These are starting points. They’re points of activation, and we’re really excited to see how different people will activate it in different ways.”

Art|Play has also started to work with UNESCO to expand the Art|Play pedagogy and find new ways to advocate for arts in education globally.

“We’re really excited to explore the opportunity to connect with other people around the world who are really advocating for young children’s learning through modern and contemporary art,” says Penfold. “I think a lot of innovation and change in education happens through small groups of people coming together and saying, ‘We’re going to do things differently.’ And sometimes that process can feel quite isolating, but it’s how a lot of revolutions come about.”