2017 Arts Together in Beitou

The community arts project Arts Together in Beitou, initiated in 2014, is a joint effort by Hong-gah and PeiTou Culture Foundation (PTCF) to seek the joining of the museum’s abundant arts resources and the foundation’s pouring effort in cultivating the local. As we enter the third year of this project, we have four Beitou local elementary schools to join as our partners, i.e. Taipei Municipal Qingjiang Elementary School, Taipei Municipal Datun Elementary School, Taipei Municipal Yixian Elementary School, and Taipei Municipal Shipai Elementary School. While looking forward to a long-term partnership, this collaboration facilitated the forming of an arts learning network, encouraging children in Beitou to explore and to learn more about their own community, while using arts as a method to give voices to the people in this community.

In 2017, Arts Together in Beitou has also carried on the spirit of creating a platform for community encountering and communicating. Through co-creating exhibitions with Hong-gah, children were given the stage to present themselves: Inspired from last year’s exhibition, Municipal Qingjiang Elementary School turned illustrations into scripts and prepared stage play during the whole semester with involvement of teachers from different subjects. The Mask Performance by Taipei Municipal Yixian Elementary School is a combination of hand-made masks and role-playing performance, which will light up the opening for the exhibition. Da-tung Elementary School makes the most of school feature, presenting porcelain and lacquerware works from all six years students. And in the new comer Shipai Elementary School Senior Academy, grandpas and grandmas use painting to reflect their daily lives, putting retirement a new definition.

One could perceive not only the teachers’ endeavors in innovative teaching and connecting with the local society, but also the student’s creativeness and delight throughout the process of their artsmaking. We hope that this series of activities and performances could bring about opportunities for schools and museum and the local community to connect and communicate. Together as a community, we could go on further.

Taipei Municipal Shipai Elementary School Senior Academy