Early Visions

Each spring, the Museum reaches into the community to offer this six-week program, which pairs University student docents in mentoring relationships with Boys & Girls Club members. Docents plan curricular, motivational, and creative activities that help students explore the Museum's exhibitions, and relate the children's discoveries to their own lives. This program is an important opportunity in the lives of at-risk youth throughout the city. It gives them exposure to the possible career choices available through the University, as well as a backstage look at the operation of the Museum.

Through the Architecture School's Institute for Environmental Negotiation, the Museum has arranged for University and Community Action for Racial Equity (UCARE) to provide diversity and racial sensitivity training to our Early Visions volunteers. This year's program will also now work closely with the student driven project to create a memorial on University grounds to the enslaved persons who helped to build the University, "Preserving Our Past, Framing Our Future: A Memorial for Enslaved Laborers," and the Early Visions curriculum will largely focus on socially active and public art.

This partnership offers us the opportunity to create a unified six-week curriculum for the Boys & Girls Club which integrates the Museum's Southern Views/Southern Photographers exhibition with the children's own experiences, and exposes them to the opportunities for community building through artistic activism.

Early Visions Syllabus

February 1 & 3
Cultural training for volunteers

February 8 & 10
Art training for volunteers

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Week 1 | February 15 & 17
Museum tour of the Southern Views/Southern Photographers exhibition

Week 2 | February 22 & 24
Photography expedition into the children's neighborhood

Week 3 | March 1 & 3
Lawn tour with a focus on black history

Week 4 | March 15 & 17
Presentation about memorial project

Week 5 | March 22 & 24
Memorial brick making

Week 6 | March 29 & 31
Children paint Memorial Bridge mural portraying themselves and their neighborhood

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March 31
Opening of joint exhibition of design competition and children's related projects.

The eight week spring program incorporates training sessions in early February with the opportunity to work in a mentoring capacity with Boys & Girls Clubs children during one or two sessions a week; Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 5:15 pm. U.Va. students interested in volunteering as student mentors should contact Aileen Mavity.