Students, teachers, parents and community members will roll up their sleeves to create art this spring. A new project called th!NK is a collaboration between all the schools in the Rutland Northeast School District and the Compass Music and Arts Foundation in Brandon. The concept is to create a large collaborative drawing by engaging the creative strength of the RNESU students, teachers, parents, and community members.
Beginning March 20, the walls of the main 2,300 sq. ft. gallery space at the Compass Music and Arts Center will be covered with big sheets of blank paper, and over the course of the following three weeks more than 900 students of all ages and their teachers will take field trips (at least one and as many as four trips a day) to visit and draw on the walls using ink and a brush.
Planning and execution of this event has been, and will continue to be, a very large undertaking. The hope is that it will be an event that embodies the collaborative, positive, and creative nature of our community. We also hope the experience of working on this drawing will promote conversation and thinking about what it means to be part of a big project, and a community, like the one we live in. Making thoughtful choices about what to draw while considering both what has been drawn before you and what might be drawn after you leave is a metaphor for living in community with others.
The space will also be open on Saturday afternoons (March 25 and April 1) from 1-5 p.m., as well as Thursday evenings (March 30 and April 6) from 3:30-7:30 p.m. for families and community members to participate in the drawing. Together we will transform the sheets of blank paper into a single complex and interconnected drawing.
On April 13 from 4-7 p.m. there will be a reception for everyone to visit and view the completed drawing.
