ArtLink: International Arts Exchanges for Students

Participate in an exciting cross-cultural experience that addresses education standards!

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ArtLink is a dynamic, international adventure in cross-cultural exchange brought to you by VSA arts and Creative Connections. In this program, students, ages 7–14, create art projects that reflect their lives and cultures, and then share their work with their international partners. The goal of the exchange is to ignite participating students’ creativity and curiosity while providing an opportunity to gain new insights into another culture and country. Through this process, students will also gain new perspectives on their own culture and communities.

The program is specifically designed to engage all students in the learning process while focusing on education goals by:

• Weaving seamlessly into standards-based curricula for subjects such as visual arts, language arts, and social studies.
• Lending itself to a variety of instructional approaches, such as differentiated, project-based, and multi-modal.
• Providing resources through the teacher guide, such as “Tips for Including All Children.”

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A step-by-step teacher guide provides suggestions for participating teachers on incorporating the activities into their programs. Classrooms prepare their ArtLink exchange packets consisting of the student artwork, student artwork descriptions, and an optional introductory video. Classrooms then receive their partner's exchange packet along with the ArtLink portfolio, which consists of selected artwork from a variety of participants. Selected pieces of art are showcased in both live and virtual exhibitions.

Theme

ArtLink’s theme for 2008-2009 is “Windows: Looking out, Looking in.” What does one see when looking out of or into any window? It could be a window at home, at school, at a local store, in a church, in a bus… indeed anyplace that has a real or imaginary window. This view will be the subject of a student’s art piece. It can depict what one literally sees at any time of day or night, or what one sees in the mind, or in a dream. The art can depict a revealing scene from everyday life or one that takes place on a special day. It can be set in the past, present, or even future. The scene can illustrate happy moments, times of difficulty, or a combination of both. One scene, or multiple scenes, can be presented. Students need only keep in mind that they are communicating a meaningful aspect of their culture through art.

TIMELINE

• September 5: Deadline for enrollment in ArtLink 2008–2009.
   
• September: Teachers receive the easy-to-follow Teacher Guide with step-by-step instructions on how to successfully incorporate ArtLink into their lesson plans.
   
• September–November: Classrooms plan and make their art projects and description sheets, and send them to Creative Connections.
   
• November–December: Once the artwork is received, pieces of art from each classroom are selected to form an international art exhibition, as well as a virtual exhibition for audiences around the world. The rest of the artwork will be exchanged with partner classrooms.
   
• January: Classrooms receive their partner classrooms' artwork and exchange thank you letters. Participating classrooms also receive a portfolio of color digital prints from a number of other ArtLink classrooms.
   
• May: Art exhibition in Connecticut, US, and virtual exhibition posted online at www.creativeconnections.org.
   
• November: Annual art exhibit in Washington, D.C.

ENROLLMENT INFORMATION

Enrollment for ArtLink 2008–2009 is closed.

If you are interested in participating in the 2009-2010 program year please contact Melissa Del Rios, program development manager, at artlink@vsarts.org.