IB Community Theme: Sharing our humanity

Grade 5 Art students at Western Academy of Beijing explored the concept of making connections with the community and environment through a series of installations designed to highlight the amount of waste that is produced as a result of a "throw away society." 

Inspired by the art work of Australian artist John Dahlsen students created environmental totems with found 'junk' collected from school families.  Students worked in groups to identify a message they wanted their totems to convey and then set about expressing those ideas visually.  Each group needed to create a mission statement to guide their designs.

Below are some of the student's mission statements. 

"We want things, we all like to have beautiful things that make our life easier.  Have you ever stopped to think about how the production of these things affect our world.  So much pollution is a result of us wanting things.  If we stopped wanting these things, then people would stop making them and there will be no more pollution."

"Everyone likes to look good, but at what cost?  Buying fashion, especially in China harms our environment.  It uses materials that waste our resources, creating huge piles of landfill.  We need to think more carefully about the impact our choices have."

By visually representing environmental issues students were able to concretely explore the concepts and see for themselves how everyday actions or simple choices can result in damaging the environment.  The notion of act locally think globally was easily understood and applied through this unit.  

Images

Images