Urban Connections and Outreach
The Department of Visual and Performing Arts
Overview of Urban Connections and Outreach
Presented by Edin Vélez, Associate Professor, Video Production
Overview
The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is about to launch a new
integrated arts and media studies curriculum that calls not only for
students to engage with the communities hosting Rutgers-Newark as part of
their educational experience, but also teaches them strategies to realize
that engagement and its potential for long-term civic betterment.
This pedagogical initiative involves art and media studies students working
across and between disciplines, in and with communities, marrying service
to community with real world experience, and learning engagement
techniques that could benefit them and their communities long after
graduation.
The department has already begun to introduce and/or develop
classes and projects for the new curriculum such as the New Media and
Public Art Civic Participation Initiative, which is a community-arts
project that partners the department with local community organizations
in Asbury Park.
Overview by Program
Music
The Rutgers University Chorus, Newark Campus, performs concerts throughout North Jersey every semester. Over the past several years the Chorus has given concerts in 30 communities within the five counties surrounding Rutgers-Newark, maintaining a strong commitment to a program of campus outreach. Once each year the Chorus also performs in downtown Newark at the PSE&G Lobby.
Photography
The Introduction to Photography course was recently overhauled with the support of the Honors College “Uses of Diversity” grant.
Assignments in the Intro. to Photo course frequently require students to examine the communities they come from, as well as the people and places in Newark and the Northern NJ region.
One project investigating Newark architecture requires students to research and explore a location prior to photographing it. Recently, one student has made it his semesters work to debunk the myth of the "exotic" Indian with his photographs of the Indian Market in Jersey City.
Another Photography course, Documentary Style, requires students to
incorporate a social component as their basis and have enough depth to
survive a semester’s scrutiny. This has yielded a range of approaches
including street photography, familial investigations, as well as more
traditional photo essays. This course will eventually provide a
comprehensive photo archive of the region.
Other projects include:
Coloseum Night Club photographs made at a gay/lesbian club in NJ
A Russian Orthodox Community
Out of Service photographs in the NYC subway system
We're Americans Now, portraits of Portuguese men and their careers
The Enchanting James Street Commons, an examination of the James Street Community in Newark, NJ.
RUN Art is an Art program offering art classes to students in Newark as well as the Northern NJ region. Classes will be offered on Saturdays during the Fall and Spring terms, as well as during the summer for more intensive study.
The primary purpose of the program is to give individuals a taste of college study and to encourage students who might not think of applying to college to do so.
While outreach programs are common at most art schools, RUN Art is
unique in that it will be small in size. This will allow us to provide
more attention to individuals and to follow up on their performance in
their respective high schools.
Art
The Design Consortium, a competitive internship, provides graphic design students with the experience of working in a design studio.
Students design and produce printed materials for the Rutgers-Newark campus, university community, and local non-profit organizations.
Partial Clients and Projects List:
On site Mural in downtown Newark designed in collaboration with Newark high school students. The New Newark Foundation and StudioWorks, Newark
On site Mural produced for single mothers who were recently released from prison and living in this halfway house. Project FIRST Halfway House, Irvington, NJ
Volunteer Instructors taught a basic graphic design and computer skills course to Newark at-risk, inner city high school students. StudioWorks: A Communities in School Initiative, Newark, NJ
On site wall mural downtown Newark. Newark Center for Families and Communities, Newark, NJ
Identity and stationery system for this after school program. Glass Roots, Newark, NJ
Crime reduction billboard advertisements. Newark Police Department, Newark, NJ
Poster series celebrating the 150th anniversary of Edison’s birth. The Edison National Historic Site, Orange, NJ
News from Poems 7/8 brochures for a annual poetry contest. Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Newark, NJ
Television
This program has two main components: narrative and documentary production. For this report we will concentrate on the documentary courses of the program.
Documentary videos by their very nature involve the maker with the community at large. Our intermediate and advanced students research and produce documentaries within Newark, Jersey City, Manhattan and other urban areas.
This semester we have received support form the Honors program to refocus some of our classes to deal more explicitly with diversity.
Students have produced short documentaries addressing issues such as:
Asbestos removal and its impact on immigrant Spanish speaking workers
How the New Jersey State Lottery impacts low income individuals in NJ
How young Indian immigrants react to American culture
A portrait of a Cuban immigrant through his dessert baking business
A portrait of a struggling Puerto Rican painter in New York
Theater
In the spring of 2004 a course focused on utilizing oral histories as both a research tool for investigating the immigrant experience in the Newark region and as a performance resource for analyzing and documenting the results of that research. The course culminated in a multimedia production derived from the oral histories conducted and collected by the students and adapted by them for the stage. Something to Declare: Tales of Immigration combined video, music, dance, poetry and theater.
In 2006-2007, building on the coursework that led to the development of Something to Declare, a two semester “Oral History and Performance” seminar combining students from the Honors College and the Department of Visual and Performing Arts is focusing on the immigrant detention system.
Bring in high school drama teachers and large groups of their
students to attend the main stage productions (free admission).
Theatre Independent Study and Internship students work with local
groups and train high-school and junior high students in the theatre
arts. Firehouse Street Academy, NJPAC (through Sanaz Hojeh), and
internships with community theatre companies.
Journalism
At the most basic level, journalism courses require students to write and report on the region around them. While this is true of most journalism programs, we take this a step further and explore what makes metropolitan New York and New Jersey unique.
Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
325 Hill Hall, Newark, NJ 07102
