artworxLA

Los Angeles, CA

artworxLA seeks experienced Teaching Artists to facilitate student-centered arts workshops at alternative high schools for the 2019–20 academic year.

artworxLA is a non-profit organization dedicated to education through the arts. With a hands-on approach, we combat the high school dropout rate by empowering teenagers to think creatively, re-engage with learning, and become catalysts for social change. We serve more than 1000 students annually at over 30 alternative high schools throughout LA County. Teaching Artists facilitate weekly two-hour workshops over 11-week seasons. Student projects address one of three themes based on exhibition programming at partnering cultural sites (see opposite page). Workshops culminate with a Public Presentation event where multiple schools come together to share their work in visual, media, literary, and performing arts.

ABOUT THE TEACHING ARTIST POSITION 

Teaching Artists inspire students’ curiosity and connect them to thematic content, their environment, and community in new ways. Teaching Artists motivate students to complete a project, emphasize problem solving in the creative process, and instill a reflective practice that helps students grow as active community members. Teaching Artists work closely with a Workshop Coordinator, who co-facilitates workshops and provides support in communicating with schools, building rapport with students, organizing supplies, and other administrative tasks. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE TEACHING ARTIST: 

• Participate in the Summer Teaching Institute and seasonal in-service meetings.
• Facilitate 10 two-hour classroom workshops once a week.
• Submit a syllabus and lesson plans for the workshop series.
• Participate in a Public Presentation event hosted by cultural partners. 

QUALIFICATIONS 

The qualified candidate will have professional experience in fine arts, literary or performing arts, design, media, or related field; at least one year previous teaching experience (experience working with teens preferred). A successful candidate will reflect a teaching practice that balances a creative project structure with student voice and choice; exemplifies inquiry-based discussion instead of lecture; and inspires excitement about learning. Candidate must be flexible in adapting lesson plans to effectively engage students and communicate clearly and passionately about their respective art form. TB test/fingerprinting required. 

TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT 

Teaching Artists are hired as independent contractors on an 11-week seasonal basis. 

Fall 2019 begins August 26; Winter 2019–20 begins November 25; Spring 2020 begins March 16. 

HOW TO APPLY

Please submit a résumé or CV and cover letter highlighting your teaching practice and your interest in working with students in alternative high school environments. E-mail all materials and questions to [email protected] Deadline for applications is July 10, 2019. 

Should the applicant be selected for an interview, artworxLA will request a sample lesson plan and two references from colleagues familiar with your teaching practice.

             2019–20 Themes & Cultural Partners

After the Flood: Building Community through Rituals of Care

Cultural Partner: Skirball Cultural Center

In what ways might the artistic process be a space for healing and care? Inspired by new additions to the immersive Noah’s Ark installation at the Skirball Cultural Center, artworxLA students will build a metaphorical ark of their own through the creation of rituals that traverse self-care, intergenerational care, care for community, and care for the environment. Learning from ancient flood stories across cultures and the transformation of materials in the interactive Noah’s Ark galleries, students will draw from traditions and imagine new iterations of “care-giving” and “taking care.” Rituals might include dance, sound, ceremony, media, or design, and projects will explore the role of the artist as a practitioner for healing communities and building resilience.

Banish Stigma: The Power of Personal Voice and Representation

Cultural Partners: UCLA Art & Global Health Center/Fowler Museum at UCLA

How can the arts be powerful tools for combatting stigma? Through exhibitions at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, artworxLA students will explore personal voice and nuanced storytelling in digital media, installation, and mixed-media assemblage. Through Positive Eyes illuminates the life experiences of individuals living with HIV and AIDS from ten major cities across the globe. The exhibition includes powerful photo essays that address key themes of the AIDS epidemic: widespread stigma, extreme social inequality, and limited access to lifesaving medication. The retrospective Rina Banerjee: Make Me A Summary of the World guides viewers through the artist’s interpretation of the world while revealing the associations and experiences viewers bring to the trip. Galvanized by both exhibitions to confront stigma in their own lives, students will create projects that build empathy, challenge labels, and stamp out judgment and bias.

Double Vision: Art at the Intersection of Identities

Cultural Partner: Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College

How does art embody, investigate, and reimagine our shifting and multiple identities? Engaging with the work of contemporary artists on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum, artworxLA students will consider how art is interpreted and created from intersecting identities. Since the 1950s, photographer George Rodriguez has documented multiple social worlds. The exhibition Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez is a rare mix of Hollywood and Chicano L.A., film premieres and farmworker strikes, album covers and street scenes, celebrity portraits and civil rights marches. Students will also explore the work of Carolina Caycedo, Yolanda González, and Umar Rashid (Frohawk Two Feathers) and produce their own works that highlight their relationships to family, space and place, the past and the future.