On July 26-28, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the CoLab hosted and facilitated the CoLab’s 8th Annual Advanced Summer Institute for the Arts (ASIA). This year’s 2011 ASIA brought into collaboration teacher-leaders from 3 diverse Writing Project sites to explore innovative cultural practices that promote complex 21st century literacies, envision those new approaches to support their local site work, and, enact prototypes of those models for implementation in their local contexts.

The 3-day experience launched a year-long experiential inquiry that explores, envisions and enacts models of practice guided by our research questions:

1. How can museum and formal school settings become cultural landscapes for 21st century literacies learning?

2. What role do innovative and creativity-generating cultural practices play in local and cross-site collaboration?

3. How does taking a design and innovation stance provide new spaces for teachers to expand their individual and collective community of professional learning for self and students?

4. What new models for learning can be developed through the CoLab ASIA 2011 process?

The Design Team includes Teacher Leaders from Diverse NWP sites:

Piasa Bluffs: Jacqueline Green, Patti Swank, Bill Miller, Meredith Murray, April Sabo-Lay, Cara Lane, Candice Gaudette, Debbie Rudolph, Heather Hartmann and Ralph Córdova.

South Coast: Judy Hug and Nicole Schon

Gateway: Nancy Singer, Kathy Lewis and Sioux Roslawski

Saint Louis Art Museum: Mike Murawski and Nicole Post (2011 Master Teacher Fellow)