My name is Hannah Rankin. I am a School Outreach Instructor for Educational Programming at OJAC.
Normally during the school year I travel to various Region 14 school campuses, visiting thousands of students through our Art-To-Go program. While on spring break this year, I received an unfortunate phone call saying that the schools were closing due to Covid-19 precautions, which meant that myself and the other Outreach Instructors would ultimately not see our local students, classrooms, and teachers again until the next school year. This was hugely disappointing as we love our monthly campus visits, as well as hosting each of those students at the museum in May for the final month of the program. But- just because Art-To-Go was placed on hold, doesn’t mean that our student outreach went on hiatus! The Education Department at the OJAC worked quickly to create outreach alternatives for these student audiences despite these unusual circumstances.
Even though we are not able to greet and learn with our students in person, we have offered many opportunities these past months to learn #athomewithOJAC, including virtual field trips, staff-led gallery tours, visual-art inspired mixtapes and studio-process demos via our social media, just to name a few.
One program I have specifically worked to facilitate are our weekly Art@Home Survival Kits. Every week through this program we provide free, take-home craft/ activity kits for local learners ages 4-12. These kits include guided visual instructions and all needed supplies to create at home at the kitchen table.
We have watched each week as families from ours and surrounding communities make the long walk or drive to visit the trunk outside our museum gates and retrieve their free bags. They have created wind-chimes, woven turtles, sun-catchers, bird feeders, constellation flashlights, balloon rockets, kaleidoscopes, and even braided pet toys that could donated to a local shelter. It has been a blast to offer these projects each week and I’ve so enjoyed seeing the photos of student creations that parents have tagged and shared with us via our social media!
I won’t say I haven’t missed the personal interaction we’ve grown accustomed to with our local K-12 audience, and I look forward to a time when we can once again, roll our art-carts through the doors of each local campus. But the OJAC Education Staff have been so proud to continue to serve our students and families in a way that is fun, educational and FREE during this challenging time.
If you are one of the hundreds of families taking advantage of our weekly kits- we hope you feel the love we are packing into each brown bag, and know that we can’t wait to see you soon!
Hannah Rankin
OJAC School Outreach Instructor