Carving Out Freedom, Piecing a Community
Steamroller Printing
The class and community engagement project sought to engage participants in collaborative arts practices and community building. While learning about effective teaching practices for intergenerational communities of diverse learners, participants discussed how projects can impact, change, or influence the reconstruction of our own identities and how we can learn from each other’s backgrounds and traditions.
The collaborations culminated in a series of large-format woodblock prints created with a steamroller on a community printing day.
Carving out Freedom
The Envisioning Freedom project focused on the implementation of an intergenerational community arts-based collaborative project between Washington, D.C. community members and Corcoran College of Art and Design and University of Maryland faculty and students.
Four Freedoms
Exploring the topic Freedom, with its historical significance connected to President Franklin D Roosevelt’s 1941 Four Freedoms Speech, and the subsequent artwork created by Norman Rockwell - among other related works of art - students and community members shared personal stories, group discussions and interpretations of what freedom means both individually and for a neighborhood or society.
Cross-disciplinary
During the six week experience, the collaborators conducted oral interviews, created mammoth woodcuts, wrote narratives and poetry, and recorded a video documentation of creative ideation on the concept of the four freedoms.
The project culminated with a community steamroller printing day held in the parking lot of the community center. Participants engaged visitors in inking the woodblocks for printing and taking a turn at the wheel.
The steamroll block prints went on display at the National Park Service Kenilworth Gardens, ArtReach Community Gallery at THEARC and the University of Maryland Art Gallery.
The interdisciplinary curricular connections provided participants with arts-based, civically engaged research opportunities encouraging faculty, museum staff, and students to design community engagement experiences locally, nationally, and internationally.