MixedMedia

I’ve just finished a second round of changes to Peace Tiles’ World AIDS Day 2007 discussion guide, which is ready for download and review. I really, really appreciated the feedback of diligent readers of the first draft – I think it has helped to improve the overall structure as well as some important and specific details. So I wanted to introduce the guide to a larger audience  with an invitation to have a glance through it, give it a test run if you can, and please share with me any insights and recommendations you have to improve the guide.

The guide, titled A Triumph of the Spirit, builds off of the Amazing Grace of Texas companion guide, which introduced a series of “playing cards” as a way for book groups to discuss Texans’ experiences of faith. I adopted that format – with the permission of the original book’s publishers – as a way to put some of the remarkable Peace Tiles imagery created by young people to good use. In a nutshell, the guide encourages educators and artists to convene their own discussions around the HIV/AIDS epidemic and it local and global dimensions as part of a search for ways to take action.

If successful, the guide will serve as a blueprint or template for subsequent guides that address human trafficking, children in conflict, children and waste, and the growth of cities. If anyone is interested in helping to run workshops on any of these issues so that a pool of tiles from which to develop the cards is available, please drop me a line at lars@mixedmedia.us

Thank you in advance for taking the time to look through the guide and providing feedback!

Since 2005 the Global Peace Tiles Project has helped community educators use the visual arts as a way to elicit stories about HIV/AIDS from young people. These tiles are used in a variety of ways – primarily as part of large mural installations in public spaces. Recently, a number of these tiles have been integrated into a discussion guide about the global AIDS pandemic aimed at middle and high school aged children.

The World AIDS Day discussion guide — which features sixteen “discussion cards,” each centered on an image produced by a young person — invites groups to reflect on the experience of HIV/AIDS and what aspects of the pandemic’s effect on people might be shared. The guide encourages discussion groups to think about ways they can take action to mitigate the effects of AIDS in their community, region or in the world.

The draft guide is available for download, and comments on this early version are welcome! For more information about Peace Tiles, visit www.peacetiles.net