Union Hall Inaugurational Meeting

We currently have meetings every 3rd Sunday
at Union Hall (1027 Grand St., 4th Floor) at 3pm.
At this time we have a skillshare and a general meeting.

Working meetings take place on Tuesdays from 6-9, also at Union Hall.

All are welcome to Union Hall!


'Creativity is Relational.'

MEETING NOVEMBER 15 NOTES (also available on NEW blog: www.teachingartistunionbrooklyn.blogspot.com)

Attendees:
Sara Julig, Helki Franzen, Michael Wiggins, Alison Levy, Jennifer Sullivan, Abigail Weg, Huong Ngo, Lindsay August Salazar, Anna Larson, Lisa Sinkowski, Michael Eckblad, Candice Heberer, Colin McMullan, Rachel Farmer
IN SPIRIT:
Chris Kennedy, James Andrews, Maya Erdelyi-Perez, Jose Serrano-Reyes, Saira Mclaren, Shizu Homma, Nick Normal, Noah Apple

What a meeting! I am still recovering from having you all in one room!
We talked a lot. It was intense. Many new members!

QUICK VERSION:
-Meetings now every Tuesday, 6-9. Work-time. Next Tuesday's theme is starting the manual. Please let me know if you will be coming.
-Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilarchitexture/sets/72157613581603092/
-Make sure you are on the mailing list (sign up at teachingartistunion.org) or get on our facebook
-Presenting at NYU on Friday evening, please email if you'd like to come or participate. I don't have the details settled yet, but it's going to be around 6pm.
-Roles: I have mapped out some roles for many of the people in the group. Please let me know if you have a specific task, title, or role you would like to fulfill. I have a bit of a plan already, but I want to create a formal board of erectors. I will write individual emails this week about possible roles.
Check out our new id cards: good for discounts and free entry to museums.



LONG VERSION:
The meeting opened with Sara reading Reggio Amelia after we ate Colin's most amazing brunch.
It was the first meeting in the new UNION HALL.
We read the mission statement while cutting out our id cards from the ART WORK Newspaper recently published by Temporary Services.
We discussed the goals of the Union.

We discussed many different teaching strategies, including the inquiry based model taught at Guggenheim and CUP.
We all have teaching packets from our organizations. Let's get them together and wheat-paste something with them.

Many new members came who deal with different facets of art and education in their work/life. A very exciting conversation began as we discussed the membership of artists who are not professional teachers in the union. It is a priority of the TAU to support teaching artists in all manifestations, and we began to explore opportunities to network and support all the different interests represented at the meeting.

Anna Larson came, who is a certified elementary school teacher who teaches at Children's Storefront School in Harlem. Her perspective was from that of a resident teaching staff of a school, and she offered advice about ways to approach schools as an independent artist and offered insight into the difference between being an educated educator vs. being an outsider-(tribal!) teacher.

Michael Wiggins blogs for the Association of Teaching Artists: (http://teachingartists.blogspot.com/2009/11/save-people.html !!)
He brought a big bowl of enthusiasm with a side of experience organizing teaching artists and being one himself. He suggested a weekly working meeting which will now take place on Tuesdays from 6-9pm at Union Hall. He emphasized the need for teamwork, funding, networking with other organizations, and emphasized the timeliness of our sweet group.

I informally introduced the School of the Future, the first manifestation of a school of teaching artists for teaching artists. More on that to come. The first event associated with that project will take place this summer at Sgt. Dougherty Park in Bushwick. Come to a planning meeting to get involved, and updates will be posted here in coming weeks: www.schoolofthefuture.org. I am hoping that TAU members will play a big part in the project.

The last news is that TAU has been invited to present as a part of a colloquium at NYU-Steinhardt this Friday. If there is anyone who would like to come or help present, please let me know! The theme of the talk that night is art education in unconventional contexts, and we are representing 'community' for teaching artists to an audience of art education students. David Darts helped organize the series (http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/David_Darts) and he will be there-- he seems like good people.

Skillshare: Colin and Anna showed us how to put together a sweatlodge for the roof...