MEDIA ARTS

Photography for High School

HIGH SCHOOL

Thursdays 3pm | Teaching Artist: Karina Mata

Students were introduced to the basics of photography, including guidelines for composition, angles, point of view, depth of field, and shutter speed. Students explored different genres of photography, among them fashion photography, street photography, and portrait photography.

Documentary Film

HIGH SCHOOL

Thursdays 3:30pm | Teaching Artist: Kristy Messer

In film class, students analyzed different types of documentary films before getting into groups (and some individual projects) to collaborate on a film with a common theme/question. Students needed to include interviews, collect outside footage, and collaboratively edit the project using a program called WeVideo. The film below is an example of one of our group projects. They wanted to further explore the topic of climate change.

Building Blocks of Graphic Design

ELEMENTARY & MIDDLE SCHOOL

Tuesdays 4pm | Teaching Artist: Ashley Margo

In this class, young designers experimented with the building blocks of graphic design to create unexpected results. Exploration included play with color, form, space, and letters to design pieces of personal expression. Students designs utilized both handmade and digital techniques.

Every class began with a warm up with students listening to music and visualizing what they heard. Throughout our session together they designed glyphs (letters) that expressed who they are, explored typography, form, and color through poem design, played with scale and hierarchy by experimenting in college.

Field Trip: Corita Art Center

Students went on a virtual field trip to the Corita Art Center to learn about the artist Corita Kent’s mixture of pop culture and advocacy for social justice. They were introduced to her printing process—serigraph silkscreen—and explored her collection of work. Additional virtual field trips included visiting Hauser Wirth to learn about the artist Ed Clark’s use of color, abstract form, and the invention of shaped canvases in his work of abstract expressionism. What you see is each student’s response to the work shown.

Color Symbolism

Students collaborated with each other about what colors symbolize to them, before visually exploring how five different emotions can be expressed by color. Students then selected one of their pieces for a second iteration and to explore a different design medium. The poems you see in the slideshow were written collaboratively.

Color Poems

Previously, students designed graphics around existing poems. For this exploration, students wrote their own poems framed around the perspective of a specific color that they selected. Following writing the poem, students designed a graphic incorporating their poem, typography, color, form, and space. What you see in the slideshow are their poems.

Postcards and Stamp Design

MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL

Thursdays 4pm | Teaching Artist: Ashley Margo

Emerging designers created multimedia postcards and design stamps for friends and family in this graphic design workshop. Students explored visual communication design, developed an understanding of contemporary and classic postcard design, and examined the history of stamps and modern stamp production techniques.

Warm Up

Every class began with a warm up reflecting on the past day or week in the form of abstract data representation and learning about a different artist or designer. The artist or designers related to the weekly postcard theme either in their work, technique, or have designed postcards themselves. The artists and designers included: The Dear Data Project by information designers Stefanie Posavec and Giorgia Lupi, Artist Lauren Halsey, Artist Corita Kent, Heatherwick Studios, and Photographer Vik Muniz.

Postcard

Students designed a new postcard in the first six classes:

• Week 1 was framed around point, line, plane, and self-expression.
• Week 2 explored form, space and self-expression.
• Week 3 students experimented with typography, poems, and collage.
• Week 4 designs were created with a specific recipient in mind.
• Week 5 framed the design around a story that involved character, place, and multiple layers.
• Week 6 students completed all of their postcards.

Stamp Design

With the USPS as the basis for stamp design topics, students explored a stamp topic that was of personal interest to them beginning with the sketch phase. We looked at the Smithsonian Stamp Museum as well as the technical aspect of stamp printing and production. 

With our quest designer, Maggie Lee, students learned about a brief history of stamps/postage—the first postage stamp designs, the creation of the US Postal Service, authorization from Congress to issue the first US postage stamps, commemorative postage stamps, modern era "Forever Stamps", the stamp design process, anatomy of a stamp, stamp design styles, and studios that now design stamps for the USPS.

Postcard & Stamp Description

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE: Select the Visual Arts or Performing Arts tabs above to explore more art shares!

PERFORMING ARTS

Acting for Film, TV, and Animation

MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL

Tuesdays 4:30pm | Teaching Artist: Elisa Bocanegra

Virtual classes lent itself perfectly for students learning on-camera acting technique! In this culminating video, youth performers work on material from great writers like Louisa May Alcott and Luis Alfaro. The use of solo pieces in training demonstrates the students' ability to perform lengthy material with confidence that is gained through class exercises.

The Total Actor

HIGH SCHOOL

Thursdays 4:30pm | Teaching Artist: Elisa Bocanegra

Lyric Lennon and Keziah Arteaga reading a scene from Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonnergan

Osiris Galvez-Paredes, Emely Gonzalez, and Ari Muñoz reading from untitled television audition copy

Group Photo

Eamon Cannon Comedy Project Stand-up and Improv

MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL

Wednesdays 3pm | Teaching Artists: Susanna Spies & Jerami Monreal

This class provided the opportunity to speak, share, and laugh together within Improvisational games and individual topics shared within Stand-up. The culminating class share shows how Improvisation and Stand-up Comedy are both gateways to connect, express, create, and share our voices around matters that means something to us individually—and how to create imaginary circumstances with our peers within Improvisational games. Each serving to welcome expression, creativity, and tons of fun along the way! 

Acting

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Tuesdays 3pm | Teaching Artist: Kristy Messer

Students devised and acted in a short Zoom mystery film, the genre of their choice. The content was student generated and required skills of collaboration and communication as well as creativity. Could we have discovered a new webisode series with girl detectives? 

Songwriting

MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL

Tuesdays 3pm | Teaching Artist: Myra Flynn

Students in this class really honed in on classic song structure, rhyme scheme preference, and "life lessons" as a general topic or theme. We had a beautiful time unpacking what is going on in the world and how it relates to our personal lives, our activist lives, and what the responsibility of a songwriter is in 2020. These videos are one-minute clips provided by students of their original music for the purpose of Inner-City Arts' Instagram.

Finding Your Voice

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Wednesdays 3pm | Teaching Artist: Myra Flynn

This class met 3 different objectives: writing a commercial jingle together as a class, writing a rap incorporating rhythm and rhyme, and writing individual original songs. Our art share here presents students' original songs performed in a group setting. Each song has been revised a minimum of three times with peer/group editing and feedback.

MIDDLE & HIGH SCHOOL

Thursdays 3pm | Teaching Artist: Myra Flynn

These students used covers and original works to discover their own most unique and gifted voices. They delved deeply into vocal technique from breath work to range expansion. The students tried on different genres as if they were hats, learned techniques for performance anxiety, and even touched on a bit of songwriting structure for beginners. Here is a video of their chosen favorites from the session recorded and performed as a group mashup.