Student Projects & Adaptations: South Fayette Middle School

Summary:

Diane Lally and Betsy Ross teamed up to work in a truly unique fashion, combining two afterschool clubs for a project exploring the artistic practice of collecting as a means to compare and contrast pop culture in the U.S. and Germany. Working after school was necessary because scheduling conflicts made this interdisciplinary collaboration impossible during the day. The clubs met once a month and focused on creating a collection of correspondence between American youth and their German counterparts. Students created “pop” packets that contained a silkscreened celebrity portrait, as well as the photocopied contents of their pockets and backpacks newspaper headlines, and a “pop” button. These packets served as both personal and cultural portraits of youth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The German Club students sent the packets to their pen pals and did so with the request that they send the photocopied contents of their pockets, as well as current newspaper headlines and other culturally specific items in exchange. In seeing the detritus of their lives in comparison to that of their German counterparts, students examined, on a personal scale, the impact of the global marketplace on culture.