Studio Art Professor Naomi Falk Co-Launches Online Project Share Resource for Art Educators During COVID-19

Assistant Professor of 3D Studies Naomi Falk has co-launched a new project share resource with Stacey Isenbarger, Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Idaho. The resource WhatDoWeDoNow.Art will house submissions from art instructors around the world who are learning to shift and adapt their teachings online in the midst of the spread of COVID-19. When classroom courses went online across the globe in March of 2020, art professors who had never taught virtual classes had to quickly adjust to methods of instruction that could work for students with limited access to art equipment, materials, and technology. Now that courses are underway for Summer 2020, and UofSC and other universities prepare for a return in Fall 2020, this online resource will help compile instructional and project assignments, ideas, and take aways for art educators around the world.

Art educators from around the world can now share and discuss project ideas across studio art in a new online resource, WhatDoWeDoNow.Art spearheaded by SVAD Assistant Professor of 3D Studies Naomi J. Falk and co-founder Stacey Isenbarger, a professor of art and design at the University of Idaho College of Art and Architecture👏

This resource is being developed in response to changing art classroom environments, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and is a place for “reimagining and sharing what’s possible in our expanding higher ed fine arts and design education.”

Whatdowedonow.art has the following goals:

Build support for the challenges we currently face in art education
Welcome and support adaptation in academic dissemination
Provide a virtual workshop space for seeding ideas and experiments
Envision and prepare for the future landscape our classes (online, in person, out in the world)
Collectively source and offer for free project prompts and examples for educators to build from
Encourage open, inclusive dialogue and collaboration
Question productively, and allow these questions to lead us

The new online platform will house projects and ideas virtually submitted by artists and educators and will answer the question, “What do we do now?” with productive and concrete approaches. Anyone can help Professors Falk and Isenbarger build up a library of the best practices in studio art education while courses remain fully online or in hybrid situations. Visitors to the website will be able to view a compilation of submitted project ideas in areas such as mixed media, fibers, social practice, printmaking, photography, jewelry/metalsmithing, and more.