Students use art to advocate for change
November 23, 2022
In October, Ms. Chloe Kesten, the new art teacher, wanted students to use art to represent the struggles we have faced as a society, as well as how art can bring about positive change. High school art students were asked to create a protest poster that connected to issues that are currently affecting our world. Kesten saw this as an excellent way for students to speak up and show how art can lead to important advances in our country. The students’ protest posters cover a wide range of topics, from workers’ rights to climate change. But according to Kesten, most students gravitated toward gun violence.
“A lot of students have seen gun violence occur and it’s not good to have a lot of shootings in our world,” freshman Mazariah Ramirez said. “We want to get people to notice this issue.”
“We know that around the world there is a lot of gun violence and we made protest signs to show we are trying our best to prevent it,” freshman Justin Elevazo said. “This project could help people in our community be safer by spreading awareness.”
For some students, the issues they chose as inspiration were personal. Freshman Zaylin Brown focused on worker’s rights. Brown found inspiration for her poster from her grandparents’ experience as immigrants. “It was hard for them to find work as it was. And on top of that, they worked hard and were underpaid for all their labor,” Brown said. As Brown worked on her poster, she realized her poster was one way to show the truth about how big companies exploit workers.
Students worked collaboratively and used a variety of materials to create their protest posters. According to Elevazo, working with friends and finding the scraps to make the project helped them use their creativity and made it enjoyable. What he enjoyed the most while creating this poster was using dimensions so that the paper had visually unique textures. He saw that the more texture they added, “the more attraction the poster got.”
Overall, according to Kesten and her students, creating their artwork was a positive experience.
“Posters and artwork can sway people’s opinions of issues by providing them with more information and keeping them more informed about what’s happening around the world,” Ramirez said.
Brown observed that this type of art is one way that students can make a difference because “you never know how seeing it can influence people’s opinions or give them emotional support. Bringing awareness to these kinds of social issues is important to me because it’s the least I can do,” she said.
