2023 Review of Art Education for Rural Children｜Art for Children’s Growth
"We go into the future with a dream. The dream was able to fly and the flight was light. My friends also invented green spaceships to launch into the sky, the sky was blue and we were happy to soar. Under the giant caterpillar there are houses on earth ...... Each of us together becomes a big family trying to guard space and the earth."
Let's follow the footsteps of the children in Dananpo Village, Xiwu County, Henan Province to unfold their expectations for the New Year!
Art for Social Welfare, Art for Growth
The "Art for Growth｜Aesthetic Education Program for Rural Children" is entering its third year. We officially published the "Drawing to See Your Hometown" reading book from Xiuwu, Henan Province, which was created by resident artists and designers together with local children. Last summer, we took the children who were about to graduate from Dananpo Elementary School to the faraway city of Chengdu, where we organized a farewell and growth art and poetry summer camp. Student Zhang Shuya wrote in her diary, "Coming to a very far, unfamiliar place, I saw a lot of the world and didn't have to envy others." Resident artists Dong Yi and Chen Jie from Shangri-La, Yunnan province, took children from the Vixi Tacheng area and created stunning ink scrolls.In 2024, we look forward to more children bursting with independent and confident beauty and creativity.
Starting from 2020, BCAF's Art for Growth｜Aesthetic Education for Rural Children series will be based on the two core values of "locality" and "independence", and will lead children to explore the subtleties of their daily lives and discover the humanistic elements around them through the diversified means of humanities and the arts, building their local confidence. Through the diversified means of humanities and arts, children are led to explore the subtleties of daily life and discover the humanistic elements around them, so as to build up local self-confidence; and the principle of cultivating children's independence is always carried through in all the aesthetic practice programs, and village teachers are guided to give the children more space to think independently through a certain degree of intervention, and to put it into practice. The curriculum consists of two main themes: four seasons of art classes designed by long-term resident artists based on "locality" and short-term master workshops.
#01
Artist in Residence
Four Seasons Art Class at Great South Slope Elementary School
Spring Programs
1. sketching, looking for flowers in spring
2. woodcutting, my family's animals
3. ceramics - seeds and pots
4. school toilet renovation
Summer Program
1. map of the village
2. sleeping pillows
3. Painting my friends
4. Pasta at Auntie's in the North
5. Painting under the Peach Tree
Fall Program
1. Guess Who
2. Showroom Discovery: Yo-Yo, Yo-Yo, Yo-Yo to ABC
3. Children's Bounce Concert
Winter Program
1. Mural Painting at the Villagers' House
2. Future Flying Machine
3. A Day of Building a Snowman
4. Paper Kiln Making
In November 2020, the Beijing Foundation for Contemporary Art, together with Zuo Jing Studio and Liu Qingyuan Studio of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts' School of Intermedia Art, launched the Four Seasons Art Classes Program in Dananpo, and today, the Dananpo Aesthetic Education Program has continued into its third year.
During the period of 2020-2023, Dananpo's rural aesthetic education program is still supported by many organizations, such as the Future Design Seed Fund of Beijing Normal University, the School of Inter-media Art of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, the Chengdu Luhu A4 Art Museum, Lifu Duo Duo, the Rural Children's Aesthetic Education Network, the Wu Zuoren International Fine Arts Foundation, the Zhejiang ZhiPu Public Welfare Foundation, and Gleaning Poetry, among other professional organizations. The results of Dananpo's rural aesthetic education have also been reported by various media and magazines, and have provided cases for discussion on art education for rural children. During these three years of on-the-ground practice of aesthetic education, from the school teachers and students of Dananpo Primary School and parents to the villagers and friends in the community of Dananpo Village, all of them have participated to some extent and are enthusiastic about aesthetic education work.
In 2023, we continued to try to use the four seasons as the nodes, from March to December, we completed the spring, summer, fall and winter courses respectively. The content of the program is still based on the daily life of the Great South Slope, from the village to the home, to the small world inside the children, all are unknown worlds worth exploring.
Yunnan Vixi Tacheng Art Education Residency
In 2023, BCFA's Eastside Oasis Special Fund initiated its first Young Artist Residency Program, in which two artists, Chen Jie and Dong Yi, brought a lively hands-on art education component to the children of Tacheng Township in Shangri-La.
In order to give the children a more complete art education experience, we organized an exhibition belonging to the children in the Tacheng Town area, inviting the young artists themselves, their families and villagers to exhibit and experience.
#02
Master Workshop
Art is a way for people to express their perceptions and emotional attitudes towards the world around them, and inspires children to develop their language organization, expression, imagination, communication, and creativity. 2023, BCAF's "Art for Growth" Rural Children's Aesthetic Education System Project invited Ms. Wei-Wei Hou, the world's first female LEGO Certified Master Builder, and her team to bring a "Body and Mind" drifting dérive game to the children of Dannanpo Elementary School. Dérive, a game of "body and mind", was organized for the children of Dananpo Primary School.
"Dérive" originates from a practice proposed by French philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s, which encourages people to ignore the inherent methods and thinking of exploring areas, and to travel and experience these areas with their mental senses, and even encourages the use of playful methods of wandering and wandering. wandering. The Drift dérive game project is an attempt to allow children to use their bodies as receptors to measure and perceive their environment through their feet; through guidance and direction, children will use objects they consider important or iconic landmarks as cognitive anchors around which they will develop a map of their thoughts to reconfigure and re-conceptualize the space of their daily lives.
#03
Art and Culture Summer Camp
In August 2023, BCAF, in collaboration with Beijing Normal University's Future Design Seed Fund, A4 Art Museum, and White Nights, organized a special "Traveling Together - Art and Culture Tour" for the sixth-grade graduates of Dananpo Elementary School. The "Graduation Trip" included visits to A4 Art Museum, "Land of the Wilderness", Jinsha Ruins Museum and other cultural and artistic venues, attempts at improvisational poetry in White Nights' Flower God Poetry Space, and interactive, inspiring, and artistic workshops and excursions with curators, poets, artists, and co-creative mentors. We will also conduct interactive, inspiring and artistic workshops and study tours with curators, poets, artists and co-creative mentors. Just like planting a seed, we see the world as limitless.
At the same time, we not only conduct inspiring and artistic art and culture summer camps to lead children in the countryside to understand the world from different perspectives, but also recruit artists and creators to create their own picture books for local children based on Xiwu County's local human resources and natural scenery.
#04
The County Aesthetics Reader
BCAF, in collaboration with the Xiwu County Education and Sports Bureau, the Future Design Institute of Beijing Normal University, and Zuo Jing's studio, designed and published "Painting the Hometown", an aesthetic education book for local children that focuses on Xiwu's local life, landscapes, products, and customs.
Based on the principle of "localization" of rural aesthetic education, Beijing Foundation for Contemporary Art (BFCA) finally recruited seven creators (Wang Qinxue, Shi Weina, Wang Mingmei, Yang Motong, Lu Xiaoxia, Li Pengpeng, Wu Xueying) to work in the early stage of the project, complete the residency, planning, writing, and cooperate with book designers and illustrators to complete the book "Painting Home". Together, they completed the creation of Painting Seeing Hometown.
This county aesthetic education book was created by seven initial team members through on-site research, interviews, classroom interventions, and workshops to reorganize the roles of the participants related to rural aesthetic education (e.g., schools, teachers, students, Academy of Fine Arts teaching students, Bingju and stranded porcelain factories, and craftspeople) and to try to link up the new social relationships between different participants. At the same time, professional designers and illustrators were involved in the post-production, and finally completed the children's book with the change of seasons and local customs and folklore as the main content.
This is an experimental and innovative practice of creating aesthetic books. By linking colleges and universities, social organizations, artists/creators, foundations, the county education and sports bureaus and other diversified subjects, we have produced an aesthetic book based on the natural scenery and humanistic history of Xiuwu County; the aesthetic book is a book of its own for local children, who will be able to understand the valuable traditional resources of their hometowns in a clearer and more systematic way, and contribute to the building of cultural self-confidence. The book is a book of its own for local children, through which they will have a clearer and more systematic understanding of the valuable traditional resources of their hometown and lay a solid foundation for building cultural confidence.
Media Coverage Related to "Painting Your Hometown
#Da Nan Po Project Nan Po Autumn Renaissance 2023: Poetry Mountain and River | Full Record of the Event
The project "Painting the Hometown", a rural aesthetics book of Xiuwu County published by Henan Zhongyuan Farmers' Publishing House, was initiated by the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF), together with the Education and Sports Bureau of Xiuwu County in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province, and Zuo Jing Studio, with the support of the Future Design Seed Fund of Beijing Normal University (BNU).
The Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF) invited Zhou Zhiyi, editorial director of Lifu DuoDuo, Zhu Lingzhi, designer of Paint Your Hometown, and Yu Xiaoyu, head of the Future Design Seed Fund program at Beijing Normal University, to discuss rural children's aesthetic education and the localization of children's books. Wang Qinxue, the author of "Picture Your Hometown", who was unable to be present at the event, reviewed the two-year process from creation to publication of the textbook.
#China Culture News Children's STEAM Education: Facing the Future, Building Confidence
The "Art for Growth" program provides children in Dananpo Village, Xiwu County, Henan Province with four seasons of art classes, "My Songs, Your Paintings" music classes, and "Children's Film Festival" video training camps, Street Dance Camp, and "Picture Your Hometown", a book on aesthetics in the county, and other colorful aesthetic practices. Through these aesthetic practices, the children of Dananpo fully understand and learn creative and inspiring art courses, not only understand the beauty of their hometown's natural scenery better, but also gradually build up their self-confidence and realize the power of "I can create".
#From Space to Place" Exhibition Series | From Bishan to Dananpo: Rural Work and Aesthetic Practice
Aesthetic education is not a training of artistic and literary knowledge in the general sense, but an existence of spiritual health, independent personality, perception and empathy. A benign atmosphere of aesthetic education can guarantee the fulfillment of our quality of life and shape a more humane social environment.
Since 2020, the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation (BCAF), in collaboration with Zuo Jing Studio and the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts School of Intermedia Art, has been inviting organizations and young creators to participate in the aesthetics of the vernacular and innovative teaching practices of Dananpo Primary School. Over the past few years, we have brought the children "Four Seasons Art Class", "My Song, Your Painting" music class, "Children's Film Festival" video camp, street dance camp, "Painting Hometown" county aesthetics class, and the "Children's Film Festival" video camp. Painting Hometown", the creation of the county's aesthetics book and other colorful aesthetic education courses and programs.
Principal Liu Xiaojiang and teachers of Dannanpo Primary School were also inspired by the practical activities of aesthetic education and set up an aesthetic education studio in the school to lead students to develop more aesthetic education activities, such as poetry writing, grass dyeing, children's picture books, and so on.
#Do you really care about children? Interview with 7 "Children's Issues Practitioners"
The Beijing Foundation for Contemporary Art and Zuo Jing Studio, together with the Xiwu County Education and Sports Bureau, collected proposals for the creation of Xiwu County's local aesthetic education textbooks from all over the society, and invited the selected creators to reside in Xiwu to participate in a co-creation workshop with invited artists and local primary and middle school teachers, to integrate contemporary aesthetics and rural aesthetics research into the local aesthetic education textbooks, and to combine with the history, humanities, and cultural objects of the area, and to customize for the local children a local aesthetic education textbook "Drawing to See My Hometown" that belongs to them.
#Xinrui Weekly Zuo Jing｜Countryside construction is a general design of rural society--A short account of countryside construction in Dannanpo
The Beijing Foundation for Contemporary Art, together with Liu Qingyuan's studio at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, initiated a program to bring children's aesthetic education to Dananpo Elementary School, and has carried out the "Four Seasons Art Classes" and the "My Songs, Your Paintings" music classes, The program has included "Four Seasons Art Class", "My Song, Your Painting" music class, "Children's Film Festival" video camp, street dance camp, and the compilation of "Picture Your Hometown", a book about aesthetics in the county. Through these aesthetic practices, as well as cultural and recreational facilities such as the Fangsho Village Bookstore, music classrooms, vegetable green bugs, interactive landscape installations for children in the Great South Slope Alphabet, and the "South Slope Autumn Rising" stage, the children were able to learn more about the beauty of their hometown's natural scenery and features, and gradually built up their self-confidence, cultivated their imagination, and broadened their horizons. In addition, under the impetus of the principal Liu Xiaojiang, the whole school teachers and students have spontaneously carried out the practice and exploration of aesthetic education, set up a studio for aesthetic education, and carried out such colorful aesthetic education practice activities as poetry class, grass and wood dyeing, children's picture book creation and so on. Benefiting from the concept and practice of aesthetic education, as well as the changes in the village landscape brought about by the "Dananpo Plan", Dananpo Comprehensive Primary School has the most stable teaching team in Xicun Township, and the children's academic performance ranks among the best in the county among more than 50 elementary school.
The December 2023 issue of #OneGoodKids xuxuduoduo is now available!
When the starry sky, trees, flowers and birds in nature, and the life, scenery and customs of the countryside are introduced into the aesthetic education classroom and reading materials, what possibilities can be brought to the children in the countryside? Beijing Foundation for Contemporary Art, in cooperation with Zuo Jing Studio and Xiwu County Education and Sports Bureau, invited Wang Qinxue and other young artists to work in residence, and based on the local customs, traditional handicrafts, natural landscape and daily life of Xiwu County, Henan Province, they designed the "Four Seasons Aesthetic Education Classes", art workshops and the aesthetic education reading book "Painting the Hometown" for the local children, so follow us to open the "Treasure Box" together with Lifestyle Duo. Follow xuxuduoduo to open the 12 possibilities in the "treasure box".
#05
Our Exhibitions
O'Kids International Children's Art Festival｜Exhibition
On June 24, 2023, the annual O'Kids International Children's Art Festival of Chongqing Original-Museum of Art kicked off. As a children's public art program launched by the Original - Art Museum in 2018, O'Kids continues to present a multi-directional observation and understanding of children's education and children's art with education, expression, creation, co-construction, and action as its core.
BCAF, in collaboration with Zuo Jing Studio and Eastside Beast, will present the Great South Slope Children's Art Education Project, sustainable school uniforms, and the "Qixi Community Eco Board Game" from the 2nd Annual Sustainable Call for Funding.
Exhibition of "Children's Design for a New Era of Aesthetic Education"｜Exhibitors
"Organized by the China Academy of Art, China Children's Center and Beijing International Design Week, the exhibition is divided into two sections: "Designing for Children" and "Inviting Children to Design".
Among them, the "Design for Children" section presents examples of children's aesthetic education practices from nine different colleges and organizations, as well as the artistic creations of a number of creators. Through the interweaving of practice, exploration and research in various directions, as well as the presentation of the "core conceptual model" distilled from the understanding of children's aesthetic education, the concepts upheld, and the development and setting of curricula, the diversity and richness of the paths of children's aesthetic education practice of the current peer group are outlined. The Da Nan Po Children's Aesthetic Education Program was invited to participate in the exhibition.
Yoyo, Yoyo, Yoyo to ABC!｜Danampo Children's Drawing Exhibition
"Yo-Yo, Yo-Yo, Yo-Yo to ABC!" is an exhibition that unfolds a narrative with children as the main subject, featuring the creations of children in the Great South Slope. Visitors can see portraits of each child and their respective familiar or unfamiliar landscapes in their daily lives in the gallery, as well as the image "Where Children Play" that documents the children's games and play. The exhibition presents the real life conditions of children in the countryside as a way to encourage them to have a better childhood.
#06
Public Welfare Gift Box
In 2023, during a three-month residency in Tacheng, based on the natural scenery and history of Weixi in Yunnan Province, two young resident artists, Dong Yi and Chen Jie, led the children of the Tacheng Town Center Primary School to draw the mountains, their hometowns, and themselves through observation and imagination. Some of the co-created artworks were transformed into part of the "Co-Benefit" box, and a special charity gift box was launched, with donations to support the development of children's aesthetic education in the local community.
