During the preparation period, the New Taipei City Art Museum (NTCAM) has actively engaged the society and continuously promote art education. Among the museum’s various endeavors, one of our missions is to “popularize and promote children’s education.” Catering to the needs and characteristics of children, NTCAM has developed a series of art lesson plans and educational outreach projects for schools to connect children with art and improve their creative thinking. It also aims to enhance children’s appreciation of art through parents-children participation in artistic experiences and creative processes.
Locally Inspired Lesson Planning Project
In 2019, NTCAM launched the “Visible/Invisible Art Class” project, and invited artists to create nine lesson plans suitable for elementary schools based on their own creative experiences and the unique qualities of New Taipei City. In 2020 and 2021, the project expanded to include more schools. Themed on local characteristics of New Taipei City, the project evolves into thirty-two STEAM courses co-developed with artists, kindergartens, elementary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools.
Different from traditional STEAM lesson plans that primarily focus on technology and merely include art for embellishment, the course design of this project revolves around art, and systematically links up different stages of education, incorporating diverse and cross-disciplinary learning, design thinking, hands-on operation, and problem-solving skills, producing cross-disciplinary courses centering on art.
Artists and teachers are like navigators in this project, guiding students through the mega constellation that is New Taipei City, leading them to explore the environment through various perspectives and methods and eventually bring home their works. NTCAM hopes that the project can bring contemporary art into schools and everyday life, build an art education community comprising the museum, artist tutors, and teachers, and invite the public to open up more possibilities of contemporary art education.