Yellow Medicine East School is a small K-12 school in Granite Falls, MN. The Disctrict’s Story Map project was an artistic collaboration between students and a teaching artist.
Transcript
Opening: This is Minnesota's Legacy: A look at the organizations and people who have benefitted from Minnesota's unique Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.
BRITT AAMODT: Art making brings with it a sense of wonder. You start with a blank canvas or a lump of clay. And an hour later, or two hours or ten, you step back and there's something that never existed before—a painting, a ceramic pot drying on the rack, a new way of seeing the world.
Tamara Isfeld is an artist from Granite Falls in southwest Minnesota.
TAMARA ISFELD: Driving through, you probably think, Oh, it's just an average small town farming community.
AAMODT: One with a deep-rooted connection to the arts. That begins early here, where Isfeld, an art teacher in in the Yellow Medicine East Schools, invites her students to roll up their sleeves and create. With grants provided by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Legacy Fund, she has brought in sculptors, paper artists and puppeteers to work with classes. In one project, students made murals and a mobile to decorate the cafeteria. Another had them create a story map tied to locations around town.
ISFELD: The story map currently is called Granite Falls Discovery Trail: Seeing the Unseen. Somebody that's coming by can go to these sites. We're inviting you to come and check out Granite Falls in a new way.
AAMODT: Through the lens of art. And a sense of wonder.
Closing: Minnesota's Legacy is a production of AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, more at ampers dot org