KUMU EESLETIKA: Residency at Kumu National Museum of Art, Estonia

Tallinn, Estonia, 2014

In cooperation with the department of education at Kumu, the National Museum of Estonia, the Institute devised a game-based art education program for 180 Russian and Estonian speaking school children funded by an EU Integration grant.

We ran a four session class with six different schools, starting with school visits and continuing into three museum visits, where they participated in a series of game based activities that encouraged collaboration, museum exploration, and mutual understanding. The Institute designed two sessions that created drawing exercises using the element of chance through dice rolling as an artistic constraint. The culminating session had pairs of students creating grid drawings using dice to determine different drawing constraints.

The project was a success; aside from creating a trove of clever and beautiful studies and drawings, the students collaborated seamlessly. With just the slightest tinge of competition, the participants quickly bonded together to pursue their artistic tasks with enthusiasm. There is great promise to continue this work in other integration frameworks.