Bridging the Gap

Illustration by CASEY CROWE/Daily Bruin

By Amy Shen
Daily Bruin Contributor

There is a common misconception in America’s educational
system that the world of art is restricted to a select few of the
“artistically endowed.”

The ArtsBridge Community Outreach Program, however, is working
to dispel that myth and to spread the joys of art to children
everywhere.

At UCLA the ArtsBridge program strives to bring the arts to more
than 3,000 kindergarten through 12th grade students in the Los
Angeles Unified School District and beyond.

Headed by the School of Arts and Architecture, the program
unites the efforts of qualified graduate and undergraduate students
in all of the school’s departments ““ Art, Architecture
and Urban Design, Design/Media Arts, Ethnomusicology, Music, World
Arts and Cultures. UCLA Performing Arts, Fowler Museum and Hammer
Museum also participate.

The program especially targets disadvantaged schools with little
or no art curriculum.

Art professor Patty Wickman serves as the director of the UCLA
ArtsBridge program.

ArtsBridge A student from the Accelerated School plays in front
of the "Children Growing Up in the City of Angels" mural.

“Because there hasn’t been much education in the
arts in kindergarten through 12th grade, the general public has
this fear of approaching the arts,” Wickman said.
“Because of the program, they at least have some exposure and
they can be a more informed audience in the future.”

The ArtsBridge program began at UCI six years ago out of a
growing concern about art programs being cut from
California’s education system. In 1999 all the University of
California campuses adopted the program, attempting to integrate it
into outreach programs already in place in the fields of music,
ethnomusicology and world arts and cultures.

Over 120 art students at UCLA are currently participating in the
growing program.

UCLA students who participate in the program become ArtsBridge
“scholars,” teaching at their respective schools for
one to two hours, twice a week. As scholars, students are given the
chance to develop their own project-based curriculum, designed to
give the children hands-on experience at creating both visual and
performing art.

“We try to integrate the arts in some way into the
classroom so that the students aren’t just having this
one-time experience with the arts but are somehow linking it to the
other subjects that they’re studying,” Wickman
said.

The nature of the projects done in the classroom vary according
to the scholars’ differing disciplines. In one class of
second graders with no previous art exposure, an ArtsBridge scholar
provided an introduction to a wide variety of media, including the
function of light in art. The children did projects with
photo-sensitive paper and created a permanent mural in their
community that incorporated their own children’s bill of
rights.

Susan Wong, a third-year masters of architecture student and
ArtsBridge scholar, taught a class of third graders about
architecture and the components of a community. In their project,
each student chose a building they deemed important, such as a
church, school or office building. Together the class designed
their own buildings, creating their own personal community.

“The program depends a lot on the specialty of our
scholars and their knowledge, their background as artists, and
their real interests,” Wickman said. “We bring that
into the classroom so that they’re teaching from what they
know best, and we also try to figure out a way to really engage the
students and think about what the students are most interested
in.”

The participation of UCLA Performing Arts and the Fowler Museum
and Hammer Museum give scholars the opportunity to bring their
classes onto campus to see visual and performance art exhibitions.
For most students, these trips provide their first experience in a
museum.

“The arts provide a strong sense of development in
critical thinking skills and problem solving,” Wickman said.
“There’s so much emphasis on students learning the
basic skills of reading and writing that students often don’t
have the opportunity to express themselves or to learn in other
ways.”

Wong agreed that children are more successful in learning when
they are taught in more creative ways.

“I did a study as an undergraduate about students who did
not excel in school because they did not do well in subjects like
math or science,” Wong said. “But when you bring art
into it, they tend to excel in art and then that carries over into
their other subjects, like math, science and English.”

The students who participate in the program often discover a
new-found confidence, a renewed interest in learning and an overall
sense of empowerment.

“The children love it!” Wong said. “They love
the projects, and they write these heart-warming letters to their
scholars about how much they feel they’ve learned.”

Besides giving the art department a valuable opportunity to
become involved in community outreach, the ArtsBridge program also
provides other benefits to its scholars. They are able to develop a
feeling of confidence in presenting their ideas to an audience and
to get instant feedback from them.

“Students say that being able to articulate what it is
that they’ve been thinking about and learning in their
specialty gives them this great sense of more fully understanding
their art and what it is they’re practicing,” Wickman
said.

Through interacting in a real classroom, scholars are also given
the opportunity to experiment with the idea of a future in
education. Perhaps most importantly, scholars develop close
personal relationships with their students and get a rare chance to
see the children develop an increased appreciation for art.

PROGRAM: If students in the School of Arts and
Architecture are interested in becoming scholars, they can contact
the ArtsBridge office at (310) 794-4822. Applications are accepted
during fall, winter and spring quarters.