Art’s Explorer #10: Community Arts Project

              Fun In The Sun Day!!

  For my community arts project, my group and I decided to create a Fun In The Sun Day that will help raise skin cancer awareness throughout schools in the Toronto District School Board. This will be an outdoor awareness day where children will get the chance to participate in different outdoor activities and get educated on the dangers of the sun and how to be sun smart this summer!!!

    I thought this would be a great “BIG idea” for schools and the greater community to get themselves and their children involved in sun safety. Children need to be encouraged from a young age to be sun smart. Our goal is to help educate children about the dangers of the sun and help prevent skin cancer.

 The organizations that will help us our promote Fun In The Sun Day will be the Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Dermatology Associations and Toronto District School Board.

   We will be using a variety of different ads to promote our “BIG idea” is shown throughout this blog...

   Facts/Prevention Tips in Sun Safety...

v  Keep children out of the sun between 11a.m and 4p.m.

v  Always use sunscreen especially on cloudy foggy days

v  Apply sunscreen 20minutes before going outdoors & REAPPLY FREQUENTLY

v  Always use sunscreen with the HIGHEST SPF (15+)

v  Children have the highest amount of sun exposure of any age group (National Skin Cancer Society, 2006)

v  An estimated 30,000 Ontarians will be diagnosed with skin cancer each year and about 2,000 of them with melanoma (Cancer Care, Ont., 2005)

v  1 in 7 children born today will develop skin cancer in their life time! (Canadian Dermatology Association)

After the presentation:

    I believe our presentation went well. I believe we got our point across about how important it is for children to start at a young age learning about being sun smart. I feel our ads were effective and helped promote our “BIG idea”.

Art word of the week: Shape

Two dimensional art  that has a length and width (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009). This term I believe is appropriate for this blog because throughout our ads we used a variety of shapes to help spread the message of our sun safety. From our one ad we used the shape of the sunscreen bottle and then chnaged the shape of its shadow a dinosaur . 

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J., E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children (6^th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar.

Art’s Explorer #9: Guerilla Art

Art word of the week: Space
 The total area defined by the size of the artist's canvas (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009). I chose to use this term because Guerilla Art has a big connection to space. Artist have an excessive amount of space to use to make their creations visible to the public. Therefore Guerilla Art can be spread in either larger places meaning worldwide or in small places as just within a community.

        Guerilla art is a form of art that involves leaving anonymous pieces in public places. It is a form of expression and an opinion directed to a large audience i.e. the public. Guerilla art is used everywhere in around the world including Toronto. When an individual wants to make a statement and give their voice in a non-verbal way they use guerilla

Guerilla art is a form of art that involves leaving anonymous pieces in public places. It is a form of expression and an opinion directed to a large audience i.e. the public. Guerilla art is used everywhere in around the world including Toronto. When an individual wants to make a statement and give their voice in a non-verbal way they use guerilla. The guerilla I chose to show to the public was a smiley face. I chose to use a smiley face because I thought that I could try and brighten someone’s day by using a big visible yellow smiley face and a written quote on that back. I thought this would be a great idea because I feel most people in this world are always in a rush, never take the time to appreciate the things around them and lastly always in a grumpy irrated mood. By having someone to walk by and to take the time to read and appreciate my guerilla art with a reaction whether positive or negative is great because at least someone felt something towards my art.

  
                                           My Gureilla Art

                                                        My MESSAGE for the audience

                                                      Someone spotting my Guerilla Art

                                              The individual picking up my Guerilla Art

                                                      The REACTION from my message

   I found this blog quite interesting and fun to do. Through this process at the very beginning I was unsure of how I wanted the public to see my guerrilla art and how I was going to portray it in my neighbourhood. I also felt a little uncomfortable letting the wider public judge my guerrilla art.  When I finally came up with an idea, I was quite excited to let the public get a reaction from my creation. At the end of this process I feel more comfortable and I would not mind making more creations and allowing a wider audience have reactions to more art work.

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This would be a great activity for educators to involve young children because I feel it is a wonderful way for children to get a deeper understanding of why different forms of art are portrayed throughout our city. Children are curious beings and incorporating them in a guerrilla art activity would be a fantastic way to teach children appreciation for the forms of art. This form of activity would also benefit the child by boosting their self-confidence and self-esteem in their creations. Educators can do this my getting children to create pieces of art and placing them around the community to share with friends, families and their peers.  

Humber River, Toronto, Ontario

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J., E. (2009). Art and creative development for young children (6^th         Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar.