WatchMECreate

WatchMEUse the arts – It’s time!

“Creativity is not fluff, it’s foundational.” It is time to accept creativity as a required tool for improvement across Maine. The research is clear – creative people are good at helping to solve complex problems. And we could always use a few more Mainers who are skilled at solving complex problems.

Maine’s grade 7-12 students get much of their formal support in developing their creative skills in Arts classrooms, working with Arts teachers in studio art, choral and instrumental music, dance, theater and other areas.  This is where opportunities exist to be purposefully creative, to not simply talk about “outside the box” thinking and action, but to practice it.

We want to know what Maine students, grades 7-12, are doing with those creative capabilities after they leave those Arts classrooms.

in this Challenge students are being asked to submit a three minute video that shows how their work in the Arts is helping them become an effectively creative person, and how that creativity is helping, or could help, them improve their school or their community.

So here it is: “WatchMEUseTheArts – Show us how the arts have moved, or could move, beyond the music room, beyond the art room, beyond the theater, beyond the darkroom, beyond the expected spaces to help students like you make their school or their community a better place for all.”

Submissions are due December 15h.

If you click here you can get the details and not hesitate to involve your students!

WatchMECreate

Grade 6 – Now Eligible

Grade 6-12 students from Maine schools which are either participating in the MLTI (this includes all public middle and high schools, as well as those private schools that have chosen to participate), are ACTEM members, or are both, are eligible to win prizes.

With that said, we would encourage all young people from across Maine to consider creating and contributing a video in response to the current challenge, as the need for creativity to support the development of a better classroom, a better school, a better community, a better Maine, knows no bounds.

We are pleased to welcome the Maine Alliance for Arts Education as a partner in WatchMECreate Challenge #4 – WatchMEUseTheArts. This is the first of two Challenges to be issued during the 2011-2012 school year.  MAAE understands the importance of creativity, and hopes students from across Maine will show how they are leveraging the creative skills they are learning and practicing by working with arts professionals in arts classrooms to improve themselves, their schools, their communities, and their state.

The arrival of the MLTI in 2002 sparked a technology revolution in Maine middle schools and this moved on to Maine high schools. Technology is making a difference in every middle and high school. But what are these tech-empowered Maine kids doing on their own?  Making movies?  Creating podcasts? Blogging? You bet. It’s happening, but up to now there hasn’t been a place for these creative Maine kids to apply their abilities to help make Maine as great as it can be.

This is going to be the place for Maine kids to show what they can do when no one is telling them exactly what to do.  Sure, there will be challenges, but they will be like the real world – big, vague, and without a set number of pages that need to be written!

For more information please click here.