ARTS INTEGRATED CURRICULUM

It is with great excitement that we continue curriculum development into 2010. We invite you to check back regularly over the next several months as this website will continue to expand and transform into the central point of access for curriculum, resources, events, and our official city-wide launching coming fall of 2010!

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
In early 2009 the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Partnered with the University Of Nebraska at Omaha’s Center for Innovation in Arts Education to develop an arts integrated education curriculum in conjunction with the Omaha Murual Project Fertile Ground. The creation of internationally acclaimed artist Meg Saligman is the largest public art project in the history of the city of Omaha and currently the largest singly funded mural in the nation. It tells the story of Omaha’s past, present, and future featuring historical references and present-day communitites.

As stewards of the completed mural, the Bemis Center has recognized the immense potential for this grand visual narrative to enhance broad based education, inspire the way we think about community, and demonstrate the value of arts integration.

The objective of this initiative is to create free educational curriculum resources that will serve as tools for classroom education and cultural and civic engagement. These curriculum resources will feature a broad range of education topics and interdisciplinary connections related to the Omaha Mural Project. They will explore Saligman’s creative process including her research about Nebraska, its history, people, and culture and how it shaped her work and concept design. Comprehensive lesson plans will explore the framework of Fertile Ground as community narrative.

All resources will be adaptable for students in K-12th grades, community organizations, organizations serving diverse populations and communities at-risk, and the general public. Curriculum materials will be free and available to the public.

ARTS INTEGRATION
Arts Integration is an experiential approach to teaching the arts in conjunction with broad based subjects. It is a methodology that not only accommodates different learning styles including linguistic, visual, and kinesthetic thinking; it allows students to synthesize new relationships between perceptions and ideas, create experiential connections to content, develop complex thinking skills through a process of discovery which allows for unexpected outcomes, and in return become more flexible and innovative thinkers equipped for evolving 21st Century demands.

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