Three Initiatives for Community-Based Art Education Practices

A ccording to Lawton (2010), art educators should be concerned with teaching their students to make critical connections between the classroom and the outside world.one eff ective way to make these critical connections is to provide students with the opportunity to engage in community-based art endeavors (Bolin, 2000;Gude, 2007).In this article, three university art educators discuss engaging preservice art teachers in community arts events.The fi rst author reviews a collaborative mural project as a meaning-making process that fostered a constructive partnership between the university and the local public school and promoted preservice art teachers' positive attitudes toward community service-learning art projects.The second author examines the Pecan Festival as a community service-learning activity for preservice art teachers.She emphasizes the importance of studying the local community and environment while connecting the art education course curriculum to a community art event.The third author refl ects on the signifi cant benefi ts preservice art teachers achieved through community involvement and outreach with the Youth Art Festival.By going beyond the classroom and getting involved in community-based projects, students become connected to the outside world and are o ered opportunities to change the public's attitude toward art.