"Owning the Art Show: How to Conduct a Student-Lead Art Show" is a presentation style workshop where participants will learn how to plan, prepare, and present a school-wide art show that focuses on student ownership and accountability. In this workshop, teachers of every experience level will learn how to empower students to plan an art show that centers student voice and the school community. We will cover everything from how to encourage students to take on responsibilities related to curating and displaying art, to organizing, storing and displaying the art in a "Wow!" worthy way.
In this hands-on workshop, attendees will explore mandala art as a meaningful K–12 art strategy that supports pattern, repetition, radial balance, symbolic imagery, and mindfulness. Attendees will paint a mandala stone design and collaborate on a group mandala arrangement while discussing classroom adaptations for grades K-12, connections to social-emotional learning, and creative expression. All supplies provided.
Take your students to the next level starting with a simple sketch. Where can they go? Painting, graphing, enlarging, Sculpture, Clay, 3D rendering, the possibilities are endless. This is a hands on workshop where you will paint, think and share.
Limited Capacityfull Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.
In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn how child artists’ monster drawings can become the starting point for soft sculpture, social-emotional learning, cross-age collaboration, and community connection. Based on a project in which young students explored emotions through The Color Monster and created monster drawings that older students transformed into handmade plushies, participants will practice translating an “ish-style” drawing into a small felt plush object while considering both creative interpretation and responsibility to the original young artist. Participants will sketch or work from a sample monster design, create a simple pattern, begin sewing and stuffing a plushie, and discuss classroom adaptations; a $8–10 materials fee is requested to cover felt, stuffing, thread, needles, pattern paper, and embellishments.
Discover how a cross-school & zone partnership transformed imaginative kindergarten drawings into dynamic three-dimensional sculptures created by high school students, highlighting the power of process and vertical curricular alignment. Participants will explore the project’s development, view student work, and engage in a brief collaborative brainstorming activity to adapt the model for their own settings. (For this project, 60 student pieces of artwork were created in total: 20 drawings, 20 clay sculptures, and 20 written creature origin stories. One "exhibit" consists of three works, one 2D, one 3D, and one write-up. We will showcase multiple exhibits of the Collaborative Creatures project at our presentation.)
Limited Capacityfull Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.
Discover how collaborative art projects can unite students across grade levels, strengthen school culture, and leave a lasting impact on both campus and community. This session will highlight creative strategies for designing and implementing large-scale collaborations, including everything from vertical round-robin projects where elementary/middle/high school students each contribute to a shared artwork to grade-band legacy projects that result in permanent installations celebrating student voice and school identity. Participants will explore planning tips, management strategies, and adaptable project ideas that foster connection, creativity, and ownership at every level.
Through the use of observation and evidence-based interpretation, Visual Art Thinking Strategies (VTS) encourages students to learn to respect diverse perspectives and collaborate on collective meaning-making. Participants will practice using VTS to foster class discussions and learn about paid professional learning opportunities to further their VTS knowledge.
