Eco Trash Couture

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Teaching Artist

Nancy Judd is a teaching artist, working with youth and adults for over two decades. She guides participants through creative experiences that help them to understand a variety of subjects and curricular connections.

Trained through the Right Brain Initiative and Young Audiences (Portland, OR) in arts integration, Nancy has completed hundreds of hours of professional development including: the Teaching Artist Studio intensive (twice) and targeted trainings on Arts Integration, Equity in the Classroom, Foundations of Trauma Informed Practice, Right Brain Strategies, and Social Emotional Learning.

Nancy is also a certified teacher and during COVID used Arts Integration in emergency substitute teaching. See Nancy’s extensive teaching resume.

Arts Integration – Youth

Vestal Elementary – all school residency using upcycled dioramas to explore curricular connections specific to each grade level.
Imply Elementary – all school residency creating upcycled puppets connected to reading standards.
Quatama Elementary – 3rd grade residency using theater, visual arts, and language arts to demonstrate understanding of the life cycle of salmon. case study
Lewis Elementary – all school residency, photo of special education class using upcycled materials to learn about cities.
Woodmere Elementary science lesson while substitute teaching – 1st graders act-out the green house gas effect and then draw it, labeling parts with science vocabulary.

Arts Integration – Adults

Nancy has been working with Deana Dartt, Coastal Chumas/Mestiza, providing arts integration activities in her Decolonization Trainings.

Reflecting on the violent US history of Native American genocide by creating collage from natural and human-made objects.
Reflecting on settler privilege through participating in the creation of the sculpture, the Suit of Invisible Settler Privilege.

Upcycled Fashion Residency Outline

Nancy works with classrooms and youth groups constructing recycled art and fashion- “trashion”- as a positive and interactive lens to view issues related to resource use, climate change and the future of human habitation on the earth.

She can lead different types of projects that:
— work with various discarded materials
— are tailored to specific ages (k-12)
— have an art or a fashion focus
— have students make individual items; work in small or large groups; make discrete or collaborative projects.

Below is a sample lesson geared to 6-8 grade students, is fashion based, and uses T-shirts, in which students create individual projects.  This lesson plan can be easily tailored for different ages and focuses.

T-shirt Transformation Workshop

T-shirt Transformation Workshop

Sample Lesson Plan: THE PRICE OF FASHION
In this lesson students learn about the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry and how to be a conscious consumer. Additionally, we explore how to use fashion as a means of creative individual expression through making upcycled wearable garments.

Essential Elements of Art Form:

Students will learn to identify the design features of everyday items. Using old T-shirts they will design and fabricate new items. Students will create design boards for their projects that include the following information:

Trashion Lesson

Trashion Lesson

  • a written description of what they are going to create
  • a sketch
  • what the item they are designing will be used for, and who will use it
  • a description of the material(s) they will use
  • a step by step process of how to construct it
  • and what the original item was made from and the environmental and social impacts of its production.

CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS

  • Science:  the science of climate change, the water system, how pollution impacts the air, water and soil
  • Social Studies: social justice issues related to consumerism, NIMBYism, Climate refugees, how different cultures use fashion, waste, and treat the environment
  • Language Arts:  reading, research, writing
  • Math:  creating designs that utilize math and geometry