As Artist/Researchers, all Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) teachers, artists, and students conduct their collaborative investigations and create their work through inquiry. They deconstruct content, form questions, and work together across artistic disciplines without knowing the end until they come to it.
In our present pandemic, schools and their external partner organizations are navigating the unprecedented terrain of remote learning. This is immensely difficult, and many are turning to overtly structured, step-by-step activities for individual students working alone that have set or predetermined results. In this way, it is known for certain what students are doing, and certainty can be comforting.
CAPE has never worked this way; we see uncertainty and the unknown as generative of learning and art making. CAPE’s questions are: can remote learning be inquiry-based and collaborative, artistically and pedagogically? Can remote learning work towards unknown results that can still be publicly shared for further dialogue and questioning? Our artistic and academic research of these questions will form the CAPE network’s response to this crisis.
When Chicago Public Schools closed on March 16th, 2020, CAPE's program staff began discussing the possibilities for teacher/artist teams to create online teaching. Within days, the CAPE Network Forum was established with the help and feedback of our teacher/artist teams.
What is on the CAPE Network Forum?
Teachers, artists, and CAPE program staff members have flocked to this space to post:
- current thinking or debates regarding ideas for remote or distance learning projects for students;
- photos and videos of actual remote projects
- recipes for at-home projects;
- instructional videos for students to view;
- questions that one hopes others can answer;
- reflections on the challenges and opportunities of remote learning in the communities and neighborhoods we work.
The Forum was a response to the need to maintain the CAPE network as a vital and evolving entity engaged together in dialogue and investigation. The response already to the Forum has been tremendous and invigorating.
