The Creative Lab
The Creative Lab is a project-based learning program for secondary students, built around experimentation, inquiry, and collaborative problem-solving.
Here is one example of the work produced (pictured above):
Five students, each working with a different color of chalk, drew on the blackboard without advance planning or assigned subject matter. Every five minutes, participants rotated positions, inheriting and building on whatever the previous student had left behind. Over approximately forty minutes, the drawing grew progressively denser, and the creative challenge deepened with it.
Alongside the drawing exercise, a separate group of students composed music beats, shaping the atmosphere of the room. A third student documented the session on video camera. The result was a genuinely collaborative environment in which visual art, sound, and documentation developed simultaneously and in response to one another.
Another example of the work produced (pictured above):
This session was structured as a two-part exercise. In the first part, students were asked to stand sideways at the blackboard and draw circles using the full extension of their arms. The resulting ellipses varied directly with each student's stature, producing a layered arrangement of overlapping rings that recorded the physical presence of each participant.
In the second part, students were invited to write a single sentence within the open areas of the composition: I will not make any more boring art. The phrase is borrowed from a 1971 conceptual work by American artist John Baldessari. Rendered here in multiple colors and as many distinct handwriting styles, the sentence became something new: a collective statement, visually varied and genuinely shared.