Global Citizenship

June 16th, 2011

Developing Global Citizens through Visual Arts Exhibition – Scottish Parliament, 21 – 24 June 2011

kmayer

Comments: none Tags: Tags: news, visual arts
 : Categories CPD, citizenship, curriculum areas, expressive arts

As part of a national, comprehensive programme of support for schools and pre-schools, the Developing Global Citizens team at Learning and Teaching Scotland seeks to help practitioners embed Education for Citizenship, Sustainable Development Education and International Education within Curriculum for Excellence. This encompasses contemporary issues, promotes critical thinking and provides contexts for learning that are relevant and challenging to young people.

Artistic impression is an inclusive and powerful means for depicting our rapidly changing world and is a rich and creative vehicle for young people to explore and express their social and emotional literacy. Through art, learners can illustrate their own inner thoughts and feelings. It is a valuable means of personal communication as learners engage in the investigation of their own identity, cultural values and norms in the context of the wider world.

The Developing Global Citizens team worked with schools in six local authorities representing a wide geographical spread: Orkney; Argyll & Bute; Dundee City; Stirling; East Renfrewshire; Dumfries & Galloway to develop innovative approaches to embedding global issues in the expressive arts curriculum. This involved 22 different schools and hundreds of learners across the 3-18 spectrum, including young people with special educational needs. Through the resulting visual art work, much of which was the result of collaboration across various subject areas or across a whole school or schools, learners ably illustrated their own thoughts and feelings about global issues which concerned them such as identity, prejudice, the universal rights of children, human rights, global interdependence and the environment. Elements of this outstanding art work have been on display, to great acclaim, at various global citizenship educational events across the country, including the Scottish Learning Festival.

This final showcase gallery at Parliament brings the energy of ‘learner voice’ to the national seat of political power in Scotland in an innovative and creative format. It clearly reflects the professional expertise and passion of Scotland’s educators who have inspired learners by engaging them both collaboratively and as individuals in relevant global issues. They have unleashed the learners’ gift of human imagination and capacity for independent, divergent thinking. In doing so they have helped learners develop their critical literacy as responsible global citizens who knowledgeably embrace the challenges of the present, and are prepared for the challenges of the future - socially culturally and politically.

December 8th, 2010

Global Citizenship and visual arts

nickmorgan

Comments: none Tags: Tags: visual arts
 : Categories Uncategorized

In 2010 Learning and Teaching Scotland funded some work in six Scottish local authorities to enable teachers to explore a Global Citizenship theme with pupils through a visual arts medium. Each of these small-scale pilot projects picked a theme and an art form to work with, and then teachers and students worked together to create artworks - usually with a local Scottish artist to lend their expertise. The process was important, as students learnt more about their chosen theme during the creative process, and the end products were often really impressive. LTS has been able to display some of the finished works at the Scottish Learning Festival and at national conferences during November, and we intend to make further use of these assets in 2011.

An article in TESS, titled “In a land far, far away“, describes the experience of Port William primary school in Dumfries and Galloway. Their project focused on traditional tales and pupils produced a variety of work based on tales from many countries. The participants then travelled up to Glasgow for the Scottish Learning Festival, to see their work on display in the Gallery space and meet the Cabinet Secretary.

The image used here is of one of the banners produced by Borestone primary school in Stirling.