Kidspace programming is geared to children who have had little exposure to the arts and to schools that are eager to incorporate arts-based learning into their curriculum but lack the resources to do so. Kidspace serves a primarily rural, working-class, economically challenged community that is in the process of changing from an industrial to a service-based industry.
Kidspace was specifically designed by the three museums partnership to support the schools and communities of the North Berkshires, supporting student improvement in academic areas and also students’ emotional and social needs. Kidspace is part of the life of every elementary schoolchild and teacher in six schools. Since 2000, it has worked with the same 100 classes each year. It has become an integral part of the public schools’ annual curriculum plans and continues to challenge students and teachers with innovative exhibitions and collaborative programming with the three museums. By providing integrated arts experiences that are designed by educators at the three museums, Kidspace staff, and area teachers, the partnership ensures that the educational goals of the program meet the needs of a changing student body.
Continuity is key in Kidspace: each year’s programming builds on the previous year. Students who were in kindergarten when the gallery first opened, and now are in eighth grade, have experienced nine years of arts education. Through studying and responding to exhibitions at Kidspace and the three museums, they have built their visual literacy skills and a strong knowledge across the history of art. When designing Kidspace exhibitions and educational programming, the partnership ensures that a range of topics and methods are explored from interactive, technology-based art to interpretations of historic paintings made out of found objects. Artists are selected for their works’ educational and artistic merit, and exhibitions have featured renowned artists from around the world, including Long-Bin Chen, Devorah Sperber, and Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Kidspace strives to bring about positive change in local schools through integrating the arts in the core curriculum. Kidspace’s pedagogy encourages students to exercise problem-solving; creative, critical, story-building; and analytical interpretation skills. Art thus becomes the catalyst by which students construct meaning about the world around them, allowing them to make connections to prior experiences and to synthesize new knowledge. With these visual literacy skills, students are comfortable encountering art in other settings, from other museums to sites within the community.
Audience Participation
July 1, 2009– June 30, 2010
- 80 field trips to Kidspace, students from North Adams and North Berkshire
- 150 field trips to the Clark, WCMA, MASS MoCA (during “Three-Museum Semester”)
- 105 artist residency sessions in the schools
- 6 teacher workshops
- 90 teachers
- 29,288 student and general public visitors