Education
Education & Community Program
The Charleston Gaillard Center's Education & Community Program, in partnership with Anson Street African Burial Ground Project and Anson African Burial Memorial, is curating lessons and arts-integrated workshops to engage students and the overall community in the life and memorialization of the Ancestors. This educational outreach is multi-tiered and will include lesson plans for Kindergarten through High School Students, a lobby display inside of the Gaillard Center, two dedicated episodes in our community series, Raising the Volume, and a continued presence in the Gaillard’s Arts Literacy Program, which integrates the arts within classroom curriculum.
As part of the Charleston Gaillard Center's Education & Community Program's three-year arts literacy program, which fuses visual and performing arts with literature, art students at Burke High School participated in a classroom history lesson with two members of Anson Street African Burial Ground Project’s staff. Students were taught the process of reinterment and the purpose of the Memorial; they also engaged with the text, Anson Street African Burial Ground: What happens when we recognize our shared humanity? Lessons from our ancestors. Once students were familiar with the project, they worked with guest sculptor, Antwon Ford. Antwon Ford is a Charleston-based, fourth-generation basket weaver, known for his traditional and sculptural sweetgrass baskets. Mr. Ford taught the students the skill of basket weaving over a two-month residency. Students learned the history of sweetgrass basketry and created a basket as their own memorialization to the Ancestors. The residency culminated with an art installation of the students’ works in the main lobby of the Charleston Gaillard Center.
The Gaillard Center welcomes approximately 25,000 students to our campus each year. Teachers will receive lesson plans prior to their visit to the Gaillard campus to engage students and give them prior knowledge of the Anson Burial Ground Memorial and what it represents to the community. Students visiting the Gaillard campus will have time to visit the Memorial and make valuable connections back to classroom curriculum and a newfound understanding of memorialization.
The community as a whole will have the opportunity to visit the Anson African Burial Memorial lobby display for more information and pick up printed content at our Ticket Office for further information as the project takes shape on the corner of George and Anson Streets.
Two of the students that participated in the residency were invited to be assistants to artist Stephen Hayes, the sculptor of the Anson African Burial Memorial. The students worked alongside Mr. Hayes for two days at The Gibbes Museum as members of the community had their hands casted for the Memorial fountain.
This program will continue as we engage more students in the process of memorialization and the opportunity to work with artist Stephen Hayes through the installation of the Memorial.
