Days 17-28
Designing a Public Memorial
Students will be required to design a memorial to represent the civil rights uprising which took place in New Haven during the year 1968. It will be their responsibility to research the history and to find a way of communicating some aspect of that time period in their work. The memorial they are to design will be located on the New Haven Green opposite Phelps Gate. Students should consider the relationship between Yale and New Haven and use this opportunity to comment on Yale’s response to the riots.
After students have focused on a specific concept, they will begin a series of drawings of their proposed work. It will be the teachers responsibility to review these drawings daily, giving each student appropriate criticism and encouragement. After the concept drawings have been refined students should create three drawings to scale of their proposed memorial. After this is completed students will begin to build finished models at 1/4 scale.
Days 28-34
Building a Temporal Memorial
Students will be given the opportunity to design a spray painted memorial using graffiti tag writing techniques in New Haven’s downtown sixth street district. The paintings should memorialize a teenager who has recently died as a result of gun violence. It will be a challenge to use this trauma as a catalyst for creating an image that both acknowledges death but also functions as a sign-post warning others to settle conflicts without violence.
Before going to the street site the students are required to brain storm, then draw concept sketches of several plausible ideas and to finalize the sketches before painting the memorial.