The Memory Project

We asked SWVAEA member Pat Carr to share her experience taking part in the Memory Project. She will also present a short q&a session about it during the Secondary Division meeting at the VAEA conference.

The Memory Project is an exciting art activity and service opportunity for skilled art students on an international basis. Ben Schumacher began this endeavor several years ago as a college student. It begins with deciding on a group of students to create individual portraits of children, registering through the Memory Project website, and paying a handling fee. Soon, you receive digital photos of orphans from another country – many of these orphans have no family and have lived in an orphanage all their life. Other orphans may have been displaced because of floods, famine, war, and death – and have been abandoned with no personal items from their childhood and families. Our students are always excited to receive and choose the child that they will recreate. I encourage our students to research the conditions of the orphan’s country - political, economic, social, and environmental. This will help them to personalize the portrait for a particular child. After completing the portraits, we display them, document them with a photo of the student artist, and send them all back to the Memory Project headquarters. Portraits should be 11”x14” or smaller, and can be rendered in any permanent to semi-permanent medium.

The NAHS club completed 25 portraits of children from orphanages in Myanmar, Kenya, and Uganda last year. Patrons and friends from the Taubman Museum of Art helped to fund this activity through their generous monetary donations. A feature article with lots of photos about the CSHS NAHS chapter can be viewed on the swo-co.com website, and in the Roanoke Times “SWo-CO” publication. Our club has participated in this activity for the last 5 years, creating portraits of orphans from Guatemala, India, Mexico, and Honduras. You can read about this world-wide “children helping children” activity at http://www.thememoryproject.org/

In addition, Ben recently sent this letter:

Dear Friends,

Well, it looks like the recession is officially affecting the Memory Project. There has been a 30% drop in artists signing up. It makes me wish more than ever that I could find a different way to fund the project, because the $15 participation fees have become too much for some schools during these hard times.

If you would like to participate this year, but are hesitant because of the fees, let me offer the following tips:

1. You are welcome to participate now and send your participation fees up to 6 months later. Just mail us this promise (www.thememoryproject.org/promise.pdf) and we'll send your pictures.

2. Consider approaching your local service organization such as Rotary or Kiwanis to request sponsorship for your artists. Such groups are eager to support youth engaged in service.

3. Form a partnership with a local bank, grocery store, or other business. The business would pay the participation fees, and then the finished portraits would go on display at the business before they are due to be sent to us. Customers would appreciate that the business is supporting local service activities.

4. Hold a gallery exhibit of the finished portraits and invite donations to cover the participation fees.

5. Students can present this letter (www.thememoryproject.org/sponsors.doc) to anyone interested in sponsoring their participation. In exchange, the student can write the sponsor's name on back of the portrait.I hope these tips can help your students participate!

Thanks very much,Ben

Arts Institute for Educators October 31

The Arts Council of the Blue Ridge in partnership with Virginia Tech is presenting an Arts Institute for Educators on Saturday, Oct. 31 from 9-3 at the Roanoke Higher Education Center, 7th floor, 108 N. Jefferson (next to the Hotel Roanoke).

The keynote speaker is from the Kennedy Center. The workshops are cross-curriculum involving not just the visual arts, but music and dance as well, so invite some non-art colleagues to join you. The cost is $20, which includes a boxed lunch.

For the details and descriptions of the workshops, check out the flyer.