2019 Symposium Program Information
(Note that all sessions are subject to change)
Keynote | Journey of the Nautilus: The Art of Transformation
Pat Plude, Director of Avivo
The exquisite, spiraled shell of the Nautilus is created over a lifetime by an ancient mollusk called a cephalopod. A newly hatched nautilus will usually have just four chambers, with the tiny mollusk living in the largest, outermost chamber. As the mollusk matures, it moves its body forward and seals off the space it has outgrown, creating a new chamber in the spiral. Together, the vacated chambers form a sophisticated system that allows the creature to adjust its level of buoyancy as it moves in the depths of the sea.
Using the Nautilus’s evocative spiral of chambers as a metaphor for the creative journey, we will explore questions, practices, and promises that will imbue our art and teaching with power to transform ourselves, our communities, and the world.
Optimistic Voices: Engaging Hearts and Minds Through Musical Theatre
Heather Meeker, Jodi Maile, Kirk Bridie, Carroll Srsen, The Musical Theatre Project
In this interactive session, The Musical Theater Project will invite educators to use musical theater as a foundation for three central aspects of true student engagement: passion, personalization and process (the 3 P’s). Using evidence-based, student-centered techniques that improve socio-emotional learning outcomes and support English Language Arts benchmarks, TMTP staff will guide participants in musical theater-based activities from classic American musicals such as Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.
Write Across the Curriculum with Comics
Cynthia Larsen, Lake Erie Ink
Learn how to use comics to teach narrative and informational writing! Comics motivate reluctant writers and visual learners and are especially effective in helping students integrate, synthesize and present information while avoiding plagiarism. Workshop participants will create both informational and narrative comics and learn strategies for creating comics in the classroom. Note: You don't have to be an artist to create comics--this workshop is for everyone!
Meditative Mandalas
Jennifer Groman, Ashland University
Mandalas are an ancient art, weaving geometry and insight into beautiful patterns. This workshop gives participants a short history of the mandala, but moves quickly into hands-on creation, providing strategies and techniques for drawing meditative mandalas. You don’t need any drawing ability or experience. This is a creative, calming activity that often brings insight and clarity to the exhausted and alienated teacher. [It’s fun, too!]
Crafting Sound: Integrated Learning for All Ages through STEAM
Abby Aresty, Oberlin Conservatory of Music
In this workshop we explore sound as a medium for integrated learning activities that span the sciences, humanities, arts, engineering, and technology. We will learn to incorporate DIY electronics, music, and arts and crafts into classroom activities by using contact microphones, found objects, and paint, to create and listen to our own graphical musical scores.
Trauma Informed Care
Felicia Fago, The Positive Education Program
This presentation will share information about the effects of trauma exposure in children and youth served in school settings, and provide intervention ideas and resources.
The Art and Science of Conservation
Holly Witchey & Julie Reilly, Intermuseum Conservation Association
Art Conservators use science, technology, math, and engineering in their work on a daily basis. We are STEAM professionals preserving the cultural heritage of our world for tomorrow. This presentation will introduce educators to the fascinating work and the world of art conservators. Since 1952 our conservators have worked on more than 10,000 objects of cultural heritage including Neil Armstrong's Skylancer Jet, and Jimi Hendrix's lyrics to Voodoo Doll.
Creative Encounters: Integrating Creative Problem Solving and the Arts
Kathy Frazier & Deborah Walker, Touching the Future Today
This session is designed for educators who wish to energize their curriculum by providing learning experiences that support creative thinking, problem solving, and the integration of the Arts. Learn Instructional strategies related to Lyric Learning, Visual and Literary Arts, Movement, and Drama along with special enrichment projects for your students.
Turning Sound into Music
Tom Lopez, Oberlin Conservatory of Music
In this presentation, participants will learn how to transform natural sounds from the world into musical soundscapes. Beginning with recordings from your phone or downloaded from websites, there are many simple computer programs that can turn sound into musical gesture and texture. Creating something mysterious out of easily recognizable audio is an exciting and magical process to inspire young composers and sound designers.
Design for the Future through the Biomimetic Lens
Carolyn Ballou & Andy Wright, Lake Ridge Academy
Using the newly popular science of Biomimicry participants will learn the biomimetic design lens process; keeping life's principles at the core of the solution. This presentation demonstrates true collaboration between the Science and Art Design disciplines in an integrated STEAM based curriculum.
Using Poetry to Teach: Lessons from the Cuyahoga River
Charles Malone, Wick Poetry Center
Since July 2018, the Wick Poetry Center has been conducting a series of conversations with students around the value of the river in our lives, its history, and our shared future. In collaboration with the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Akron and Kent Public Schools, Wick Poetry Center’s outreach team has lead field trips, workshops, river walks, and river talks aiming to bring the river to the city, and the people of the city to the river. Through this process and almost two decades of conducting creative writing workshops in schools, we've learned a lot about poetry's potential to teach. We will open with a sample lesson before discussing the larger scope of this work.
Answering Art
Dr. Jennifer Groman & F. Christopher Reynolds, Ashland University
The creative and intellectual products of others can be a powerful inspiration for our own art and social action. This is the concept of Art Answering Art and Action Answering Art. This session begins with a mini-concert where the facilitators, both singer/songwriters, share their Art and their stories of Action and the creative works by others that inspired them. Participants are then invited to share their ideas for using the experiences of the Creativity Symposium to forward their own creative art and social action. This end of the day application workshop gives you a chance to consider how you might use the ideas from the Symposium as you return to your daily life and work.
Deepening Learning by combining Art with Science, ELA, Social Studies, or Math
George Woideck, Ohio Arts Council Teaching Artist
Participants learn the techniques of equally merging art with another classroom subject from George Woideck, Ohio Arts Council long-term Artist-in-Residence in this hands-on workshop.
Collaborative Composing
Colin Holter, Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra
Learn about the work being done by the Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra's Lab Group and how that ensemble's principles of openness, consensus-building, and empiricism might be applied in broader educational contexts.
Kinetic Classrooms
Gwendolyn L. Feldman, Neos Dance Theatre
In this participatory session, educators will experience the catalytic relationship between core class subjects and creative movement. Participants will learn skills to design and implement standards-based lesson plans that foster creativity, physical activity, and experiential learning.