The Field Trip Project Asia: Developing 21st century competencies through cross-cultural art projects
This paper will examine the potential impact that contemporary cross-cultural art projects can have on the development of 21st Century Competencies (Ministry of Education, 2015) in students. Following the tsunami and earthquake that hit Japan in 2011, relief supplies, including used school backpacks, were sent to children in affected areas to help rebuild lives. To avoid excess supplies from being disposed of, artist/curator Daisuke Takeya proposed the Field Trip Project where artists were invited to transform the surplus backpacks into works of art. In 2015 the Field Trip Project Asia arrived in Singapore and a number of backpacks were sent to a local school for art teachers to engage their students to transform the backpacks into works of art. Despite living in a region that is sheltered from natural disasters and being mostly unfamiliar with facing physical hardship, it was hoped that children in Singapore would be interested and able to learn through the process of engaging with art-making that was directly linked to the recent disaster relief and aid efforts in Japan. The objective of the study will be to track the possible engendering of empathy, self and social global awareness, all part of the desired outcomes of education & emerging 21st Century competencies. As this project falls under the description of contemporary art rather than traditional art practices, literature on contemporary art will be used to inform the findings. The embodied learning experience having taken place through a focused and partially self-directed art project, classroom observations and subsequent interviews with students were conducted throughout the duration of the student engagement in the project to provide data for this research study.