Multicultural arts program hopes to expand following 'success' in public school board classrooms

A multicultural art programthat brought artists into the classroommade a positive impact inWindsor's elementary schools, according to a report.

"The program has been able to focus on multiculturalism by engaging artists from a variety of ethnic backgrounds to share their arts practices with students," the report by theCanadian Network for Arts and Learning and Arts Can Teach (ACT) read.

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ACT used $61,000 in funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation to hire and train seven new artistsfrom diverse backgrounds to develop 18 new lesson plans that explored "culture and character."

More than 225 classrooms benefited from the programming.

According to the report, more than 70 per cent of the educators that took part in the program agreed that it engaged those learning the English language, newcomers and Indigenous students and 90 per cent agreed that it supported the well-being of students.

Artist experiences

Erik "E-Tomic" Johnson addressed a webinar held Wednesday to discussthe report's results. He's a hip-hop lyricist, vocalist and slam poet from Windsor-Essex whocreated a program together with Samantha Bodaoa, who also specializes in poetry performance and storytelling.

It's called "What's your origin story" and theybrought it to eight different classrooms for students in Grades 4 through 8.

"Our goal with this program was to introduce the concept of storytelling to students through a historical lens." Badaoa told the group.

"Students were asked to write about their personal history as if they were super heroes writing their origin stories and they were able to do this in comic strips."

Badaoasaid they were then asked to think about how their personal history related to a larger collective history of their family and beyond and to create another comic strip and family tree based on that exploration.

They were also asked to create a poem based on the themes they covered in their comic strips and family trees.

Johnson also shared his family journey from the deep south of the U.S. to Sandwich. He also shared a map that showed the movements involved with slavery inNorth America "to give students a visual representation of how much not only my family but my ancestral family has moved throughout the years and to show them how got here," he said.

Badaoaalso shared the history of her family, who migrated from Lebanon to both Venezuela and Leamington.

"We really want to show the kids how much movement plays a part in collective history," Badaoa said.

Growing demand

The report stated that there is a growing list of schools that wish to be part of the program and that it should expand to meet it.

"Arts Can Teach has done an amazing job and is doing important work while providing results," the report read.

"For this reason, the program can also look to expand to other regions across Ontario."

• Read the report here

It said that expansion would be reliant upon securing more funding from organizations like the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

"This program has shown its worth and still has amazing potential," it said.