Unthinkable Imagination Activity Guide

A CREATIVE RESPONSE TO THE JUVENILE JUSTICE CRISIS ACTIVITY GUIDE

A CREATIVE RESPONSE TO THE JUVENILE JUSTICE CRISIS ACTIVITY GUIDE

Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis

January 21 – June 10, 2023

Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University

Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis is a collaborative exhibition steered by an advisory panel made up of Syrita Steib, Dolfinette Martin, Gina Womack, Aaron Clark-Rizzio, and Ernest Johnson with the support of their respective organizations Operation Restoration, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, and Ubuntu Village.

This activity guide serves as a companion to Newcomb Art Museum’s exhibition catalogue for Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis. It features imagery and words drawn from the multiple artists’ projects in the show, and builds a space to support further reflection, community engagement, along with creative expression. We invite you to enjoy the coloring pages and useful exercises. If you would like to share your visual or written responses, please email a photo to museum@tulane.edu.

To learn more, visit UnthinkableImagination.com.

WHAT IS FREEDOM?

Draw or write about what freedom means to you. Under what circumstances do you feel free?

IMAGINE A WORLD CREATED BY YOU.

On this and following pages: Together, Towards Freedom (2022) by Langston Allston with Young Artist Movement (YAM) youth artists: Jessi’ Cage, Jiyah Davenport, Aaran Hogan, Jai’Lynn Allen, Kirious Anderson, Deshawne Cornelius, Ahmad Lumar, Rashad Bakewell, Taijah Thomas, Lamaj Mathis, Anika Binalla, Alella Binalla, John Davillier. Image courtesy of the artists and Arts

New Orleans.

HOPE

Draw or write about what it means to have hope for the future. What are you hoping for?

by Louise Mouton Johnson. The imagery of this artwork creatively interprets the experience of Semaj. Image courtesy of the artist.

Blk Girl Dream in Color (2023)

by Sha’Condria “iCon” Sibley.

This work creatively interprets the experience of Kyla. Text courtesy of the artist.

We are taught limitation before we are ever taught freedom

At around the age of 6, we are given crayons yet taught not to color outside the confines of lines

Are taught to tell time but never how much time is too long to have a mama away from home

Even if I had words every shade of every color in the rainbow, I still couldn’t paint an accurate picture of a girl whose world ain’t so black and white

All I can tell you is that she ponders possibilities through prisms Imagines a world without prisons in shades of vibrant purple and royal blue, hot pink with light green, orange and yellow

Sees her own future full of fluorescence

Girl with color in her head and on top of it

16 now

She look like flower

Look like something that still bloom beautiful even when the ground hard

Sometimes sit in the soil in solitude

Introvert until she with the right friends Rooted in family

Loves Auntie

Loves Mama

Loves telling Mama everything over the phone

Because distance nor walls ain’t never stopped a mother’s Love Cords don’t get cut when paid phone calls do

She loves Nicki’s bars but hates the ones that separate her from the first star she ever idolized

Loves to dye her hair different colors too but wanna study what’s beneath the hairline wanted to be a neurosurgeon since about the age of four or five wanna know the infinite spectrum of the brain All the things it can do How it is essential to the body Don’t wanna be no Barbie bound by barbed wire

Her rites of passage ain’t come with no keys and prisons ain’t gon just unlock themselves

So she dreaming beyond concrete walls and hard expectations

She dreaming like she got both hands full of crayons and the entire universe for a canvas and she gon paint

Paint til she cover all the gray paint til her fingers get tired

Girl with a head so full of color, she adorns her temple through her tendrils

She gon paint til the blues break free from the sky

She gon paint til her brilliance makes the whole world brighter

UNTHINKABLE IMAGINATION IS ...

What is Unthinkable Imagination, to you? Draw or write about your Unthinkable Imagination.

WHERE ARE YOU HEADED?

Opposite: Run (2022) by Adrienne Brown-David. The imagery of this artwork creatively interprets the experience of LaZariah. Image courtesy of the artist.

WORD SEARCH

Words may appear frontwards, backwards, vertically, and diagonally. caring

About the Museum

The Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University builds on the Newcomb College legacy of education, social enterprise, and artistic experience. Presenting inspiring exhibitions and programs that engage communities both on and off campus, the museum fosters the creative exchange of ideas and cross-disciplinary collaborations around innovative art and design. The museum preserves and advances scholarship on the Newcomb and Tulane art collections.

The academic institution for which the museum is named was founded in 1886 as the first degree-granting coordinate college for women in America. The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was distinguished for educating women in the sciences, physical education, and, most importantly, art education. Out of its famed arts program, the Newcomb Pottery was born. In operation from 1895 until 1940, the Newcomb enterprise produced metalwork, fiber arts, and the now internationally renowned Newcomb pottery.

The museum today presents original exhibitions and programs that explore socially engaged art, civic dialogue, and community transformation. The museum also pays tribute to its heritage through shows that recognize the contributions of women to the fields of art and design.

As an entity of an academic institution, the Newcomb Art Museum creates exhibitions that utilize the critical frameworks of diverse disciplines in conceptualizing and interpreting art and design. By presenting issues relevant to Tulane and the greater New Orleans region, the museum also serves as a gateway between on and off

Land Acknowledgment

The city known as New Orleans, including the Tulane campus and Newcomb Art Museum, occupies an Indigenous space at the confluence of many waterways and travel routes. The boundaries of this place have always been permeable; the land and water on which our city sits has witnessed trade and cultural interaction between various Indigenous Nations for centuries. These nations include but are not limited to the Chitimacha, Biloxi, Houma, Choctaw, Atakapa-lshak, Washa, Chawasha, and Tunica. To this day, Indigenous Peoples dwell in the city. Bulbancha is a Choctaw word meaning “the place of foreign languages,” and it is still in use as a word to define our urban locale.

Indigenous Peoples have contributed an enduring cultural legacy to New Orleans—a place where Indigenous and African Peoples have been trafficked, enslaved, and discriminated against; and where People of Color have fought for justice and equity for over 300 years. This statement embodies Newcomb Art Museum’s commitment to inclusion and understanding of our institutional history and responsibility to continue learning.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

UNTHINKABLE IMAGINATION: A CREATIVE RESPONSE TO THE JUVENILE JUSTICE CRISIS

January 21 – June 10, 2023

Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University

ISBN 979-8-9881080-0-9

©2023 Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University

Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University

Woldenberg Art Center

6823 St. Charles Avenue

New Orleans, LA 70118

Unthinkable Imagination: A Creative Response to the Juvenile Justice Crisis is supported in part by grants from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Partial program support comes from the Dorothy Beckemeyer Skau Art and Music Fund at the Newcomb Institute and the Andrew Mellon Foundation’s support for a Community Engagement Coordinator. Additional support comes from the Helis Foundation.

To learn more, visit UnthinkableImagination.com. Printed