Across art education disciplines and contexts, students are faced with learning concepts and techniques that require modes of thinking that are not activated in other disciplines such as literature, science, and math. This requires art educators to help students transcend ways of thinking perpetuated in their schooling. In this presentation, members of the STAC collective (Shortcuts for Teachers Artist Collective), who work across the five pedagogical environments of community, museum, post-secondary, high school and elementary education, consider their approaches to teaching as it relates to Myer and Land’s (2005) articulation of a threshold concept, which refers to competencies and concepts students must grasp to open epistemological possibilities. We argue that threshold concepts must be transcended in art education continually, and will cite examples and strategies of our own cross-contextual practices of threshold concepts in action.

The art classroom is often described as a space to develop skills and artistic style, but how can Art Educators prepare our students for the problems they will face outside school? And, how can we develop course content that responds to the contexts in which students are making and creating? The STAC (Shortcuts for Teachers Artist Collective) is an artist-teacher-researcher collective that centers problems in its pedagogical methods to instill collective art creation, support and perseverance in classroom communities. Building on common and contemporary problems seen in the artistic and social circles of the geographic places where learning takes place, this collective has used this basis of teaching in Universities, Colleges, High Schools and Community Art spaces across Canada.

This workshop is grounded in the authors’ practices as teachers and artists in drawing and painting. The session proposes a drawing workshop wherein participants are introduced to a drawing technique referred to as tracing in stillness. The technique refers to rooting the body to a location and fixing the eye and the hand on the details of the physical world, not unlike blind contour drawing. In this instance, however, the technique connects the senses of sight and touch to the landscape, thereby furthering the embodied relationship between the artist and their immediate surroundings (nature, landscape, architecture, public spaces, etc). Participants will capture their chosen setting’s contours by tracing them directly onto a transparent surface, capturing quality details in 20 to 30 minutes of drawing. Ideally, the workshop will take place outside, with a meeting point at the main entrance of the Collegium Witkowskiego, so students can draw part of the landscape in nearby Planty park or some of the facades of the university’s buildings. In inclement weather, alternative locations could include the Collegium Maius courtyard, or a classroom with windows. The workshop will close with a brief discussion on this drawing technique as a pedagogical tool as well as how it may be beneficial in various artistic situations. Prior drawing experience is NOT necessary to attend this workshop. All materials are provided.

How can centering artistic and social problems be an effective tool in Art Education? This presentation by the Shortcuts for Teachers Artist Collective (STAC) considers our developed and shared process of problem-posing engagement in our multiple art classrooms—Universities, museums, public schools and community sites. Informed by frameworks of experiential learning and critical pedagogy, the presenters have taken to using problems rather than outcomes to foster classroom creation, develop lessons that encourage experimentation and self-reflection while inviting dialogue and reciprocity between students and each other, and student and teacher. In our view, it is from healthy and critical communities of learning that affirm students as individuals worthy and capable of artistic creation.

In the move to online learning brought on by COVID-19, community art schools were severely affected given the double problem of having to share methods of tactile artistic creation digitally and the voluntary nature of a community art school. At the Pointe-Saint-Charles Art School in Montreal, three educators (members of the Shortcuts for Teachers Artist Collective (STAC)) moved quickly to develop processes and strategies for creating engaging and meaningful on-line art education curricula for participants of all abilities, backgrounds and ages. In this presentation, we will discuss the processes of three artist-teachers who created 5-8 week courses conjoining their own interests and research, while aiming to meet the needs of the students and art school. Classes shared the artists theoretical interests and practices taken up in the instructors own projects, while creating courses that centered student growth and perspectives.