If you haven’t taken the plunge of adding local artists into your curriculum, I highly encourage it. Sure, they may not have as much notoriety as the greats, below are 3 added benefits to adding these artists into your curriculum!

Connection

Okay one of the absolute coolest things we’ve discovered in teaching about local artists is that many of them are on social media showing off their artwork and in turn that gives you an opportunity to show off your students’ work to them and build a connection. Both of us (and many of our co-workers) have had really amazing experiences where artists are so flattered that we are teaching about them. We’ve had Zoom sessions, pre-recorded videos, products and resources sent to us. In teaching about these artists, students are able to see “wow, these are real people in my area who are making art” and those same people are taking the time to acknowledge them despite how busy they might be. 

Relevance

All of that being said brings me to my next point, this is all relevant to our students! They tend to be more interested in artists who are currently making things and ever changing. If you have the opportunity to build that connection with an artist (even if it happened in the past) I promise you, they will be hooked! You’ll have more information about those artists that may not be available in a Google search. Similar to how we’ve mentioned before, they live for those stories about artists and you have an inside scoop! Even if you can’t build that connection because the artist is a little more well known than others, being a follow on social media, you’ll still be able to find out more about their processes or them as a person that will keep your students intrigued. 

Local events and images

To go along with the relevance, how amazing would it be for your students to be able to attend local events where the artists are? I can imagine any artist that would be approached by a student who says “we learned about you in art class” or “I made an artwork based on your artwork”. I’ve even had co-workers attend events where these artists were and made sure to tell me and get a picture with them! How awesome is that?! Another bonus is if these artists make landscapes, they’re likely to see recognizable images or maybe the artist makes public art that they would potentially see walking down the street! 

Keep blending,

Hayley