Community-Based Art Education: Making, Teaching, and Research With/in Community Settings

Florence Gaskins Harper Endowed Chair in Art Education Maryland Institute College of Art
Baltimore, Maryland

Pamela Harris Lawton, a fifth-generation educator, is the Florence Gaskins Harper Endowed Chair in Art Education at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her scholarly research revolves around visual narrative and intergenerational art learning in BIPOC communities. Her artwork is grounded in social practice; she seeks to illuminate contemporary issues, cultural traditions, and the stories of people affected by them. In 2019 she was an associate artist at the Tate Exchange in London and the Distinguished Chair Fulbright Scholar at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.  

In addition to coauthoring Community-Based Art Education Across the Lifespan: Finding Common Ground, Lawton has published more than 25 journal articles and book chapters, 50 presentations, and 80 art exhibitions. Her artworks are in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Tate Library’s artist book collection, Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center, Florence and Eugene Myers Foundation, and the special collections of 10 universities.

Associate Clinical Professor, Art Education University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland

Margaret Walker has been an artist and educator in a variety of community, school, museum, and university settings in New York, Maryland, and Washington, DC. She taught studio art in New York City at Lexington School for the Deaf and in a community art school, and worked as a museum educator at the Isamu Noguchi Museum. Walker received her EdD in art and art education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and is currently the coordinator of the art education program at the University of Maryland.

Walker’s research focus is on community-based art education, and she connects students with community members in Maryland and Washington, DC, to develop community-based artworks that explore themes of community and human experience. She recently cowrote Community-Based Art Education Across the Lifespan: Finding Common Ground, published by Teachers College Press in July 2019. Walker is a painter and mixed-media artist in the DC area.

Artist, Museum, and Environmental Educator/Creative Community Engagement Designer
Oregon

Melissa Green is an artist, museum and environmental educator, college faculty member, and creative community engagement designer currently working with the University of Oregon and environmental conservation organizations. She is the former executive director of ArtReach Community Gallery with George Washington University and director of community partnerships at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She has a passion for forging cross-cultural connections in art and transforming communities through creative, socially engaged, ecologically minded, and accessible place-making initiatives. During her time at ArtReach, the program was recognized with the Mayor’s Arts Award for Innovation in the Arts and developed creative engagement programs in Washington, DC, working with such organizations as the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery, the National Park Service, 11th Street Bridge Park Project, District Department of Energy & Environment, Art in Embassies, and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.