Julia de Burgos Elementary School of Philadelphia voted by nation as “Best Bell.”

The Philadelphia Arts and Education Partnership (PAEP) and the National Liberty Museum are pleased to announce Julia de Burgos Elementary School’s Bell: The Dollar Bill of Rights as the 2011 Liberty Bell Winner in the Let Art Freedom Ring program. Let Art Freedom Ring is a program of PAEP designed to make art an essential part of every child’s education. Students from eight elementary and middle schools in the Philadelphia region studied the concepts of democracy, civic responsibility and liberty; then, through art-making techniques and with a professional artist mentor, created a 6 foot high, 3-dimensional interpretation of the Liberty Bell. Bells are then judged and displayed online as well as throughout Philadelphia.

This year’s winner, The Dollar Bill of Rights, was created by students under the guidance of artist Andres Gonzales and art teacher Jean Fontaine. The Julia de Burgos team created a bell in homage to the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the U.S. economy, by building a bell out of “dollar bills.”

“The project was not only thought-provoking, but gave them hands-on experience in creating a large, symbolic sculpture,” said art teacher Jean Fontaine. “They learned about the power of art expressing ideas and how, when we work together, we can accomplish a lot.  They studied the Bill of Rights, and came to conclusions about our Constitution.  I am SO proud of them.’

The second runner-up is Grover Washington, Jr. Middle School’s Bell: Infinities and Indivisibilities. Created under the guidance of artist Ben Volta and teacher Jerry Jackson, this bell has a unique take on chemistry and the world, featuring globes that connect together to form various isomers.

“We are so proud of every one of our students, teachers, and teaching artists,” said Pearl Schaeffer Chief Executive Officer of PAEP, “We want to especially congratulate the Julia de Burgos School and Grover Washington, Jr. Middle School, both who really wowed all of us with their interesting artistic and philosophical takes on democracy and liberty.”

For more information about the Liberty Bell winners and up to date information about where you can see the bells, please visit us on our Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/PhillyAEP

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While PAEP is sad to see Let Art Freedom Ring give its last bell toll for the summer, we’re excited to highlight another arts-based science and history project, Historical Catalysts, led by Benjamin Volta and Jerry Jackson, in partnership with the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of the Sciences (CPNAS) and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Taking the CPNAS African American History Program website, Volta and Brown selected 19 notable African American scientists and worked with students at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School, who then diligently researched each of these figures, leading to the creation of two distinct project components that molded digital technologies, history, and science in the creation of final products with a bold artistic vision.

Volta and Brown have described that vision succinctly, “We first imagined that each (self) portrait might function as an element on the periodic table. Similar to the way elements combine to form compounds, we imagined a large collaborative artwork that would bond together achievements in art and science.”

This larger work, the Catalyst Collider, uses the idea that these 19 voices, who represent vastly differently scientific fields, may not just bond with each. Volta and Brown imagined how they might crash into each other, creating sparks that generate new ideas, drawing inspiration from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

As they explained, “Contemporary scientists smashing atoms together with the hopes to understand the formation of the universe led us to imagine what it would look like to collide our explorations in art and science.”

The brightly colored composition features the silhouetted seven inch by nine-and-a-half inch self portraits in ways that collide. These individual portraits were made possible by the students at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School using internet databases to find images representing the activities of a variety of scientific fields. In a hands-on process, students printed the images, overlaying them on transparencies to create the colored background that runs through the larger piece and each individual portrait.

This was to show how not only how the various African American scientific voices were connected, but also how their contributions have directly inspired individual students to select each famous scientist. Ebony R. selected George Carruthers because of his contributions to astronomy and her hopes of one day getting involved in the field.

The end result was the construction of an exhibit at the middle school, demonstrating how PAEP is committed, like Volta and Brown, to using arts-based educational models to help envision new ways of educating youth that break down barriers, changing society like the scientists featured in Historical Catalysts did.

With the 2011-2012 school year just beginning, we hope that this project, along with others, will help set the tone for an exciting year of innovation in arts education.

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Today marks the beginning of Labor Day weekend, that infamous, unofficial end to summer. While some of you may be taking a break from frantically filling your car full of water wings, beach towels and buckets for sand castles during your extended weekend at Cape May, many of you might be sticking around Philadelphia or the surrounding areas. If you are, we wanted to let you know that this weekend, ending on Monday, September, 5^th, will be the last chance to see the ingenious student-created bells of Let Art Freedom Ring!

The program, in its second year, has grown to become one of our most celebrated examples of how we can teach democratic history and civic responsibility through collaborative arts-based education. In a partnership with the National Liberty Museum and National Constitution Center, where most of our bells are still on display, we shown that one of our nation’s most enduring symbols—the Liberty Bell—can be transformed into creative visions of what democracy can be in this country.

Over the past few months, we’ve celebrated a launch party on June 29^th, in large part due to the generous support of RAW Sushi & Sake Lounge and CBS3 Studios, without whom key parts o this program would not be possible.But most importantly, we’ve gotten a chance to hear from the artist mentors whose creative drive, mentoring spirit, and past experiences, have made our work in local elementary and middle schools successful.

How can we forget Marie Elcin, who recognized in her experience with Let Art Freedom Ring that, “Sometimes kids just need a different way to learn and express their understanding, and learning through art-making offers them that chance”? Or Kimberly Niemela, who, in using sun symbols as a metaphor for a brighter future, commented that, “Let Art Freedom Ring has affirmed that freedom and fairness, through arts education, are core values of a more just, civil society.”

While Let Art Freedom Ring is one of the many arts-education programs across the country, here at PAEP we believe it’s one of the most innovative of these programs and one that we hope can continue for many years to come.

So if you’re not packing up the car to catch the last rays of sunshine along the Jersey Shore, consider taking all family members out to the National Constitution Center or National Liberty Museum to celebrate the visions of democracy and justice that have been affirmed through an arts-based educational model in our schools. Without your support of Let Art Freedom Ring, we could not be doing what we do.

Even if you’ll be gone for the last summer hurrah, remember that in just taking a few minutes to vote for your favorite bell you can help to Let Art Freedom Ring!

At first glance, math and science education seem like the last place that arts-education could  flourish. At PAEP, however, we’ve found to break from the formulas that usually define these educational curricula. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the project of our talented teaching artist Benjamin Volta and dedicated math and science teacher Jerry Jackson, who teamed up with other teachers and students at Grover Washington Jr. Middle School, and Solis-Cohen and Morton Thomas Elementary Schools, to create STEAM. They were completed as a part of two US Department of Education AEMDD grants; Arts Link for Morton and Arts Bridges for Solis-Cohen.

The resulting art, which is currently on display at the Esther Klein Gallery at the Science  Center through September 30th, affirms our belief that creative expression can intersect with science, technology, engineering and math in a way that enhances learning.

STEAM was conceived at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year at Grover Washington Middle School, under the Volta and Jackson’s shared belief that the fusion of arts and science education “leads students to think critically, develop their own creative voice, and work together as a collective. The artwork that we create is an expression of this collaborative method.”

Nowhere is this more apparently than in the first STEAM component: Polygon Blooms. Jackson and Volta began by educating students on the the importance of coordinate geometry, asking them to locate specific posts in Philadelphia that they had lived and visited. They then worked collaboratively to construct 3D models created by connecting the dots of these places. The end result was what local artist Gerald Brown called, “a brilliant metaphor to address the complexities of adolescence.”

But Polygon Blooms would not be Volta and Jackson’s last project. For the 2010-2011 school year, they once again collaborated to separate new projects.

Multiple Earths was the largest scale of these projects. Completed at Grover Washington Middle School, it fused global climate change education, at the cultural programs at The National Academy of the Sciences in Washington, D.C., with the creation of a series of brilliantly colored, spinning globes that Volta hopes will, “function as a visual mantra for climate awareness as well as a catalyst for the collective potential of creative transformation.”

Oxygen was a large, vibrant map that whimsically traced one of our most precious natural gasses as it fearlessly circumnavigating the globe. Built into this project was education on jet streams, ocean currents, flight paths and how to combat the exponential rise in the production of carbon dioxide.

Finally, Volta teamed up with classroom teachers at Solis-Cohen Elementary and Morton Elementary to construct Universe X Universe, which used a series of dodecahedron, or 12-sided, sculptures that in various colors, patterns and configurations sought to answer one of our age-old scientific questions: what does the origin of the universe look like?

Over the coming 2011-2012 school year we will be partnering with Next Fab Studio at the Science Center and that there will be a reception for STEAM on Sept 21st from 5 – 7:30 pm.  At this reception visiting youth will be able to construct and take home their own dodecahedron sculpture.

In describing all of these projects, Jackson explained, “The art that was created is the visual evidence of their learning and how the students’ thought critically about how science affects the world we live in.” While none of the projects began with a specific formula in mind, often ending up in a place that was unexpected, Volta emphasized this movement and ingenuity is what makes arts-based educational models so valuable, even in the most unexpected collaborations.

Here at PAEP, we hope you’ll get the opportunity over the upcoming month to celebrate the cutting edge of arts-education, at the same time supporting the students and arts who came together to find a way to create a STEAM, an effortless melding of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.