Documentation Fuels Imagination

Arnold Aprill, founding and creative director of the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education, spoke to a group of Ohio Arts Council teaching artists in Columbus to encourage more documentation of their residencies in schools. "Too much important work just disappears," he says. "People oppose our work because they can't imagine what we are talking about."

Aprill demonstrated how teachers and teaching artists can use a digital camera to capture images and video throughout the process. Simply walking around and taking photos of the work and switching to video mode and asking students to talk about what they have learned is easy and can be a powerful start.

Aprill also urged artists and teachers to commit to more writing and publications about their work and to make the work public. He talked about a solar-powered model of the neighborhood created by students in one school. The little houses, which were the product of an interdisciplinary design process that included participation by parents, were installed outside the school. One resident of the neighborhood said that she had never before seen art on display.