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In the Community
A Commitment to the Community
Teaching Artist Jason Reblando shares his work and career experiences with Curie High School Picture Me program students.
MoCP’s educational mission is to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of the artistic, cultural and political implication of the photographic image. To expand our reach beyond the museum’s walls and to develop new audiences, the Museum of Contemporary Photography hosts several outreach projects that aim to share the vast educational resources of the Museum and Columbia College with the urban community that we serve and involve those communities in the life of the museum.
Picture Me
MoCP’s core outreach program, Picture Me, cultivates Chicago teens as independent, self-reflective artists in after-school programs led by teaching teams made up of high school art teachers paired with Columbia College photography department faculty and graduate students.
Group project by Juarez Community School Picture Me program students.
Picture Me teachers guide participants from three Chicago Public Schools, Curie Metropolitan High School, Juarez Community School, and Uplift Community School in a curriculum that empowers students to learn basic camera, darkroom, digital imaging, and critical thinking skills that enable them to use photography as a form of self-expression.
All assignments engage teens in using photography as a means to examine and explore their own lives and communities while they develop their artistic voices and marketable job skills.
All assignments engage teens in using photography as a means to examine and explore their own lives and communities while they develop their artistic voices and marketable job skills.
Chicago Public School Teachers participate in an MoCP workshop on integrating photography into their academic curriculum.
Field trips to the Museum of Contemporary Photography and workshops with museum staff and visiting artists provide students vital interaction with contemporary art and professionals working in the field. Graduates of the Picture Me program have gone on to study art at institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, Pratt College of Art, New York; Richmond University, London UK; Columbia College Chicago and Robert Morris College, Chicago among others.
Teaching Artist Jason Reblando engages Curie High School Picture Me program students in a critique of their work.
Talkin’ Back: Chicago Youth Respond
Artwork by Picture Me student artist Jonas Wheeler, Uplift Community School.
To expand the Picture Me program’s visually-based curriculum, each spring students work with writers drawn from Columbia College’s Fiction Writing Department to create a piece combining words and images.
Participating students and teachers always express the pride they feel in seeing the fruits of their efforts professionally hung on the walls of a museum.
These works are exhibited, along with the works by students in the Arts Integration Mentoring program at CCAP, in an exhibition titled Talkin’ Back: Chicago Youth Respond. Hundreds gather for the opening reception, including teachers, administrators, and family members of students. Participating students and teachers always express the pride they feel in seeing the fruits of their efforts professionally hung on the walls of a museum.
Pulaski Elementary students view their work in the museum’s Talkin’ Back: Chicago Youth Respond exhibition.
Curie High School Picture Me Program students stand in front pf their work on view in the MoCP’s Talkin’ Back youth exhibition.