Public Art
Looking for project ideas? Browse or use the advanced search to find examples that meet your desired academic subjects, grade levels, project types, and keywords.
Tip: The grade levels and subjects listed are only our suggestions. With a bit of creativity, project examples can be adapted to meet the needs of different ages and curricular goals.
After the pediatric wing in the local hospital closed, a class of kindergartners made the existing emergency room more child friendly. They changed the appearance of the emergency room to ease the anxieties many of them were experiencing, and wrote a book explaining emergency room procedures to children and their parents.
What do students get when they transform an empty lot into a thriving outdoor space? A happy, reconnected community, ... and pride in a job well done.
Playgrounds are an important part of a school. Where else can students not only blow off steam with healthy exercise but also enjoy some quiet time in the sunshine? So when 6th-grade students realized their playground wasn't meeting all their needs, they improved it.
Classes studying the Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights developed projects to connect to those studies. Students created a presentation on the Rights of the Child that was given at City Hall and the governor's mansion. They organized and participated in a peace site rededication and a peace prize festival. They also wrote and performed a play about child labor.
To unite students with diverse learning styles and ethnic backgrounds in a multilevel English course, teachers launched the American Dream Quilt project. Students interviewed family members, composed extensive journals, and assimilated and applied themes from literature to their own family experiences, before creating a quilt representing their heritages and identities.
In partnership with a local book center, students created books recording family stories and traditions. Artists trained the teachers in bookmaking, allowing them to guide their students through the process, and families joined their children to construct and decorate the books.
It all began as an introduction to the letter "Q": Quilt-related literature, both fiction and nonfiction, was read to the kindergarteners to give them the historical and cultural backgrounds on the origins of quilts. The children then took their love of quilting one step further, creating a quilt to comfort a baby residing in a nearby shelter.
Bus shelters are some of the most visible items on many roads. Second-grade students decorated a shelter in an effort to spread their message of cultural appreciation.
Facing a growing threat of buckthorn- a tall non-native shrub that spreads aggressively, forcing out local flora, including tree saplings - students did an issue analysis, community education program, and cleanup projects.
When students in a town with a Central American sister city learned about "Libros para Ninos" (Books for Children), a program providing books for Central American children, they decided to make and donate handcrafted books. The youths studied simple Spanish vocabulary to write the books, and wrote essays about themselves to accompany the donation.
After much discussion about the cultures represented within their classrooms, 3rd through 5th graders grew curious about the groups present in their neighborhood. They created a classroom museum to educate the community about its diversity.
Fourth and 5th graders worked with artists and authors to create and publish a book about their state. By weaving social studies with art, the students learned about their state in a way that was both unique and enjoyable to them.
After reading an article about babies born with AIDS, students decided to make baby blankets to publicize that AIDS affects everyone, even the youngest of children.
