Student Imagined Mural Proposals

During the fall 2019 semester, students within Professor Jen Kitson's Cultural Geography Honors course were assigned with proposing an imagined Glassboro mural. The project followed a traditional proposal for public artwork and was developed using an online interactive digital scholarship platform, which allowed student to include audio, images, text, and video within their proposal. Students were tasked with researching the cultural and historical geography of Glassboro, NJ to create a mural depicting what they learned. The students were also assigned with selecting an appropriate location for their imagined mural based on their research and topic.

Students were instructed to follow the following format for their proposal:

Each bolded heading represents a different page in the proposal. 

Home 

  • Type this as your primary heading: Imagined Glassboro Mural Proposal: title of your mural
  • Type this as your subheading: by [your name]

About the Imagined Glassboro Mural Project 

  • A description of the project so viewers understand the context of the student assignment


About the Cultural Geographer(s)

  • Write a short biography about your life experiences, expertise, and your creative interests (Who you are, what fascinates and inspires you)
  • Describe what interested you in developing this project? Discuss your personal interests in creating an (imagined) Glassboro mural (what questions did you set out to explore or what story were you interested in making visible and pubic?) 
  • Include a photograph of yourself (ideally in front of the location of your imagined mural artwork!)

Mural Proposal (if you want multiple pages/chapters for this section title the first page “Mural Proposal” and title subsequent pages with the prefix “About.” For example, “About: Glassboro Conservation Efforts.”)

  • Include a visualization of your mural near the top of this page 
    • This is a representation of your imagined mural artwork using a visual method such as collage (cutting images out of magazines) or composite photography (a digital technique that combines photos using an application). Give authorship credit if needed.
  • Include your ~2 minute audio tour of the mural so that visitors can listen or read about it
  • Include a written description of the mural artwork itself and the key ideas (this might be the written version of your audio script)
    • Elaborate on the historical context and importance of the elements seen in your imagined mural artwork. Who or what is depicted in your mural? Why? Is there any significance in the size or spatial arrangement of the elements? This is the story you want to tell through your artwork & the location!
  • Demonstrate your cultural geography perspective here or elsewhere in your Scalar (Reflection):
    • How does this particular Glassboro story enhance the complexity of this place or our global sense of place, which is an approach that perceives a local place as:
  • Made of multiple and contested meanings, experiences, and memories, histories (location, locale, sense of place; never a single story, participatory historical geography)
  • Dynamic (always changing and being made) 
  • produced through global processes (but also shaping them) 
  • Imbued with social and economic inequalities (power geometries) in which individuals and communities have unequal access to and control over the global economy and social/physical mobility (time-space compression, globalization, migration, redlining)


Location of this Mural 

  • Provide a photo (or video) of the specific location of your imagined mural artwork
  • Embed a map which provides the exact location (address or map coordinates). Contact Mike for help with this (email him where you want the map located and the latitude/longitude or address)
  • Describe this location and why it was selected for this specific artwork - place matters!
    • What is the significance of this site (culturally, socially, historically)?
    • How does this location connect with the theme of the artwork?
  • Other considerations:
    • Community partners who might be interested in funding or making this mural
    • Estimated costs ( $20 to 40 per foot) of your imagined mural
    • Maintenance considerations
    • Describe the wider environment (locale / social setting, or built environment)
    • Include photographs of the mural location and the surrounding area and/or hand drawing of the space with the mural’s size clearly marked
    • Describe the the viewing area experience. Is the mural easy to view? Is it supposed to visible? It is supposed to be discovered? Why?
    • How might this mural might be used by or contribute to the community
    • Logistics, cost, or other considerations

Reflection 

  • Describe and/or show the research you did and consider how the experience doing participatory historical/cultural geography influenced you. How has the project influenced your perception of this place? Or otherwise affected you? What have you learned from a cultural geography lens?
  • What do you think the value of your mural will be for the community? In the future? 
  • To show/describe your research experience (and reflect upon it), consider including:
    • Include photos of the places you visited to do research - libraries, historical society, Glass Museum, archives, and the DSC 
    • Academic research
    • Field work
  • Acknowledgements of anyone who assisted or collaborated with you
    • Glassboro experts, Faculty, Librarians, Researchers, others, people that helped you when you visited a library, historical society, archive, museum
    • Discuss team members and classmates who helped
    • Discuss who you met and how they helped you

References 

  • Include resources used in your research using a citation style of your choice and be consistent!

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At the end of the semester students present their mural propsals to a variety of community members including Glassboro city council members.

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