Students at Montclaire Elementary School in Los Altos are using the power of art to promote positive change and to show their concern for the global climate crisis through Arts in Action, a weekly classroom program of the Community School of Music and Arts (CSMA). Their work will be included in an activist art project as part of a worldwide campaign on climate change.

Under the instruction of CSMA visual arts faculty member Celeyce Matthews, approximately 100 fifth-graders at Montclaire are creating drawings about nature that will later be collaged together, photographed and uploaded onto the Web site of 350.org, a non-profit organization whose mission is to encourage world leaders to enact policies to reduce global carbon-dioxide emission levels.

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The children’s art will join thousands of other images from around the world as part of 350.org’s call for worldwide creative action. World leaders will convene to discuss the issue in December at the U.N. Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

“Using the power and visual impact of art, these students are actively helping to shape their future world, a world in which they hope humans and nature will coexist in respectful balance,” Matthews said. “Art is a powerful tool to promote students’ active, creative engagement with the world.”

Matthews said that as part of the project, students are learning about artists such as Diego Rivera who have used their art to initiate social change. When working with students, Matthews asks them to take an image from nature – animal, plant, tree, sunset – and use oil pastels to create a large, bright, simple, graphic image that has a strong impact from a distance. The images, outlined in black, are vivid and bold.

350.org has designated Saturday as the “official day of action” for calling attention to the issue of global climate change. In addition to being shown on the 350.org Web site, the children’s art will join images from around the world displayed on screens in Times Square in New York City. Monday, the 350.org crew will visit U.N. Headquarters to deliver the photos to diplomats and delegates.

CSMA, a non-profit center for arts education, reaches more than 40,000 people through lessons and camps in music, visual arts and new media; arts-in-the schools programs; after-school art clubs; concerts, lectures and exhibitions; and free community events.

For more than 25 years, CSMA’s Arts in Action and Music in Action programs have provided weekly, sequential, skill-based classes at local public and private elementary schools. CSMA’s arts-in-the-school programs currently serve more than 7,000 children at close to 30 schools in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

For more information, visit www.arts4all.org or call 917-6800.

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