The Art Room

Trudeau Elementary School is fortunate to have a designated art room that is sponsored by the Vancouver Board of Education as part of our Artist-in-Residence Studio Program (AIRS). Since 2016 our school has benefitted from enriched arts experiences delivered by experienced artist-educators through funding from the AIRS Program.  Each year our guest artist works with teachers and students to create relevant arts activities that address the Core Competencies and curricular content.  The artists bring to our school a wealth of professional expertise and a profound understanding of the importance of visual literacy in an increasingly digital world.  

 

The art studio is used by the artist-in-residence once a week for specially tailored workshops, and the remaining days of the week, the art room is accessed by teachers and students for a range of arts integrated activities. The room also affords our teachers and other staff to benefit from professional development opportunities and a deeper understanding of strategies for arts integration.

 

The visual arts support exploration, experimentation and our capacity to visualize. Our ability to visualize is crucial to our ability to remember and recall information. Gesture drawing, for example, stimulates processes that help students identify and understand facial expressions, body language and emotions. This in turn facilitates social and emotional growth and well-being. Drawing things from the natural environment helps students to recognize in a deeper, more thoughtful way the uniqueness, diversity and beauty of our world. When children make and exhibit creative works as part of a community, they benefit from a deeper sense of purpose and belonging in community. There is solid research that shows the benefit of visual arts activities for facilitating our ability to focus and attend to details; for building our capacity for perspective taking and creative problem solving; for fostering more deeply embodied understandings of the world we live in; and for profoundly enriching our capacity to communicate that understanding to others.

 For more information on the significance of art to eduction please feel free to access the following links:

 

Artist in Residence Studio Program

 

Artist in Residence Studio Program “I feel like whenever I do art, I can always have a smile on my face. I feel like I crawl out of my shell.” Grade 5 student

 

Sir Ken Robinson "Changing Education Paradigms"