The
Imperial Valley Desert Museum’s signature community outreach program is a hands-on ceramic art program aimed at understanding and celebrating the
unique cultural traditions of indigenous ceramic pottery production in the
Imperial Valley. The Coiled Clay program was piloted by a 2011-2012 grant from the
Imperial Valley Community Foundation. During the 2012-2013 school year, a
second grant was used to expand the coiled clay program into the signature
public program it has become.
To
create a viable engaging, hands-on activity to support existing art curriculum
in the county school systems, Museum staff took artifacts and educational
curriculum into classrooms where students had the opportunity to study original
artifacts. The museum introduced art concepts of shape and form
associated with traditional native crafts. The museum provided clay and
instruction in coiled-clay techniques and students styles and techniques create ceramic art based on the styles and techniques used by the indigenous population
who first lived in the Southern California deserts.
Measured
outcomes were aimed to serve 12-15 home school students at one home school program and
330 art students in nine classrooms at three high schools. It was anticipated
that the program would have two components, the production of 3-dimensional coiled clay ceramics and the production of 2-dimensional visual arts. Owing to
the success of the pilot program last year, we also anticipated serving younger
students during community programs.
Over the course of the
grant program museum staff visited 12 classrooms. This included Holtville High
School, Central High School, and home school programs in Holtville and El Centro.
A total of 236 students were served in their classrooms.
What was
unanticipated during the grant cycle was the interest and participation of home
school programs. Three home school programs participated in the grant, the
Freedom Academy in Holtville, the California Virtual Academy, and the Imperial
Valley Home School Academy, a program of the El Centro Elementary School
District. The home schools each arranged for multiple museum visits to their
classrooms and two of them scheduled complimentary field trips to the museum.
The extended interaction with the home school programs led to the tailoring of
our grant program to meet their specific individual curriculum-based needs.
There were 1115 documented participants in the coiled clay program
that the museum ran with the small grant from the Imperial Valley Community
Foundation. This number is nearly three times the number of students served in
2011-2012. Of these, 268 were youth aged 14-22, the target audience of the
grant. This year, we found our most
receptive audience to be youth ages 7-10. Both at the museum and at public
festivals the connection, attention span, and success of younger children was
noted. The museum has begun to implement programs to serve younger children,
but trained education staff is noticeably lacking.
The majority of students who participate in the coil-clay program are
younger children and adults. The museum has been very successful at fairs and
festivals in Imperial Valley. In fact, we are often overwhelmed with the
response to our hands-on coiled-clay tent. We also noted this year that a
significant percentage of student who do coil clay projects at our tent during
fairs and festivals are older high school students who have previously worked
with our program in a classroom or at the museum.
The product created through this program is outstanding. Students that
have been coming to our programs multiple times, for more than two years,
produce quality work. It is inspiring to see the level of work that can be
accomplished through a successful program. Observing continued student improvement has been exciting this year.
