Acción Arte

by Tonya Godee

The following interview with Jody Steiger and Today Godee took place on August 10th, 2021. The interview has been edited and shortened for the purpose of this article.

Tonya: Before we begin, can you please tell us about yourself, the cultural institution you work for, and your role in the institution?

Jody: My name is Jody Steiger. I've lived in Costa Rica since 1977, which makes me a long-term Costa Rican; I have become a naturalized citizen. I'm president of the board of directors of an organization called Accion Arte. We are a nonprofit organization that works together with different museums (public and private) and different cultural institutions in the country. We set up programs and methodologies where we use the arts to help create programs that will teach soft skills, English as a second language, keep kids in high school and help prepare young adults for the work field. So what we're doing is connecting different organizations, museums, cultural institutions and utilizing the arts to help enrich the people we're working with.

Tonya: So before the pandemic, was there already a digital strategy offered to audiences online?

Jody: No, we had always talked about it; I should tell you that the project I'm specifically going to talk about with you today is a digitalized version of a program called Piensa en Arte. Which means “think with art.”

We’ve developed this program with the Ministry of Public Education and the Ministry of Culture and Youth. The program utilizes a methodology with conversations about works of art in all fourth, fifth and sixth-grade classrooms in the country. This means that we have a yearly impact on approximately 250,000 students. We help the students develop their language arts and soft skills, such as working in groups, expressing ideas based on visual evidence, diversity of opinion and respect for diversity of opinion, and many other soft skills.

However, during the pandemic, schools were closed here for a little over a year. So the program couldn't be carried out in the classrooms. And it's a specific program that has to be interactive. But it couldn't be interactive because the teachers weren't working synchronically with their students; it was all a-synchronic. Also, there's a problem in Costa Rica: there isn't complete internet coverage, easy internet coverage all over the country. And a lot of our students just can't afford it because it's not free. So even if they had the virtual program on their cell phones, they still have to pay for the data for their telephone. And a lot of students weren't able to do that.

So, in the beginning, we just didn't know what to do. And then we came up with this project, which does not have to be used synchronically; it can be used a-synchronically. But we couldn't afford it; it was just very expensive. And everything that we do is through donations; the minister to ministries of public education and culture doesn’t pay for anything. They help us with the distribution. They help us get the teachers’ training, but we have to raise the money for all our programs. And we had this program; we just didn't have a way to finance it. And then I came across a call for projects last September. That was the solidarity project, and we applied for one, and we won. With the financing from ICOM and matching funds that we were able to raise in the country, we were able to create this project. The project is called Museos Para Llevar, Museums to Go.

Tonya: (Let’s) continue talking about that. So could you please highlight the program that you mentioned?

Jody: The program is called Museums to Go. We thought it would be kind of cute because everybody during the pandemic was doing everything to go. Uber Eats, groceries, everything you needed in life was sent to your house. And so we figured, well, we're going to send museums to the kids’ houses, how can we do it? So we called it Museos para Llevar for Museums to Go.

I should first explain a little about the methodology of Piensa en Arte. It's a specific methodology based on Visual Thinking Skills, a program developed based on Rudolf Arnheim’s cognitive development psychology. It was first founded in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in their education department with Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen.

Tonya: Let's move on to the lessons learned that you had during the development of the program. So what did you learn from your experience, experience creating or implementing a digital program?

Jody: Let's talk about what we've learned in the process of creating it because, as I said, we haven't gone live with it yet. In the process of developing, we realized that the physical and aesthetic layout of the programs that we're putting online has to be impeccable. They have to be beautiful; otherwise, people aren't going to watch them. If I just say to the students, “hi, guys, what do you think is happening in this poster?” “Here's a picture of this thing. What do you think is happening?” They're not going to be engaged as much as if we create something aesthetically pleasing graphically. And it has to be something that's graphically what they're used to. These are kids who get into all kinds of stuff through the internet, YouTube, Instagram, and social media. And so we had to take that into consideration in the way we were presenting the works of art and the cultural institutions. So we tried to do this through the eyes of students.

The other thing that we learned along the way was to trust the students. In the conversations that we had about the buildings or the works of art, we didn't censor in any way what the kids said. Often in teacher training, we make up what the kids are seeing; we have a whole lesson plan for teachers that goes through the methodology with questions and answers that we created and invented. We didn't do that with this. We really had kids; we had six kids at each filming. The kids wore masks and were separated and all of that. But we recorded everything that they said. However, We don't use their voices, we have actors using their own voices, but it's exactly what the kids had said. We realized we had to trust the students. So I guess the first thing that we learned, in a way, was what we had to do to make the videos be more like what kids would look at right now. Secondly, to trust their ideas and what they see.

I guess another aspect of it would be to know what their interests are. I can watch a video without getting bored if it's really good. I can watch a learning video for an hour or forty minutes. But it has to be really great to keep me interested for an hour and a half or two hours. With kids by 10 minutes, they're bored. At first, we thought we would do half-hour videos. No way because The Think with Art class lasts 15 minutes to an hour in the classroom presently, well we couldn't do that with this. This had to be a 10-minute video. Maybe one of them goes to 12 minutes, but it's a very funny one. (watch example

The third one is always something that has something funny about it. The third video starts with a big boom and flashing dust. And there she is, an actress dressed exactly like the woman in the painting. And she goes, quote, “Where am I!? I fell out of this!” We always try to do things that will entertain the students. And so I guess what we've learned is that there are many virtual programs; for example, I take virtual tours with all the museums in the world. But they're very straightforward, traditional, you know, that's like, “Hi, everybody. Here we are in the Museo de Prado. And what we're going to see now is go through this.” That's not what kids need right now. They needed something more along the lines with what they're in touch with, with their other connections on the internet. And so I guess that would be the biggest lesson, go where the students are, not where we want to be.

Tonya: So far, while you're developing your program, what would you consider more and less successful? And can you share with us why?

Jody: Again, because we haven't brought this out to the students, I can only assume what would be more or less successful, not what actually has been. The creation process has been taking us a lot longer than we thought. We figured we would be in classrooms by now because there was a vacation in the middle of the school year in July, and then the kids were back in school in August. We had hoped to have the first ones done in August, and we had the first three videos ready to go. However, we didn't have the Teacher's Guide ready. And the Ministry of Education wanted to wait until we had all nine videos. So the Ministry of Education said to wait until you have the entire program ready.

Also, we've had chances to have online teacher training sessions. Teachers don't have time sometimes to read the whole Teacher's Guide, but they will have time to see an online training session. So I guess we underestimated the amount of time it would take us to create all of this. But the actual difficulties with it, I assume, are going to be along the lines of the availability of the internet. There are schools where it's going to be hard for the teacher to be able to stream the program. And so we're going to have to make sure that the teacher is able to download the video onto their computer. License-wise, we will allow the teachers to download it onto their own private computers. At first, it was something we didn't want to do because we wanted this program to be done according to the methodological terms that it was made for. We don't want it to be used the wrong way. But we've decided this is going to have free access; people can download it onto their computer. And that will enable us to get over the problem of interconnectivity. If a student can go to the public library where there is the internet, download the video onto their device, and then go home, then they don't need to have internet in their home.

Tonya: ...Well, let's talk about the developments. So would you say during the development that your strategy had changed?

Jody: Good question. I guess yes. I mentioned earlier about really wanting to be able to reach students where they are. And so, as we were developing this, it changed the way we did our post-production. All the filming was done the same way, but we've added many different styles and graphic art to make it more enticing to the students in the post-production. And that got developed along the way.

Also, the program has a group of international advisors who are from the region. We have someone from Chile, from Brazil, from Venezuela, from Mexico, from Guatemala, and from the Dominican Republic. And they have helped us figure out ways to make this more international. So it can be reproduced in other parts of the world. And so that's something that's being developed along the way.

Tonya: Thank you for your answer. Let's move on to new opportunities. So do you think the experience of creating this program has offered/opened any new opportunities for audiences or digital format or funding or partnerships?

Jody: Without a doubt, we're applying for funding from Ibermuseos. It's an organization of Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. So it's Portugal, Spain, and all of Latin America. And we're applying for a grant with this organization. The thing is, you have to have at least two or three countries from the region working on this program or the project. So we will be asking for this funding for next year to develop the regional level version of this program that came out of the work with the group of advisors from different countries. And we discovered that in Brazil, there's a museum that uses a very similar methodology, but they use it only in the museum. It's not part of the public school system. And so they were fascinated with the idea of being able to do the videos, which they could then share with the schools. Then there was another country that at one time had done something similar. So we're going to all get together on a regional level and create three more videos. And so that was a way that we could apply for funding from Ibermuseos together.

On a national level, it enables us to include more cultural institutions around the country. We never involved institutions that were outside the Central Valley. The Central Valley of San José is where the three major cities are. The majority of the population of the country lives here. It's an urban area. The rural areas also have museums that we haven't been involved in because nobody can get there. Now with this methodology, we've included the historical museum. In the beginning, we never thought to include museums from outside the community, but it worked wonderfully. The challenge was that we had to go there to film. So that was a little bit more expensive to get out of the city and all of that. But it made us realize that we can now consider art from other parts of Costa Rica. We can include these additional cultural institutions through the use of the virtual way of sharing.

Tonya: Will your program be intended to be permanent, or just for a specific time?

Jody: Definitely permanent, no question about it. And the work that we've done with the Ministry of Public Education, they're thrilled with this, they can't wait for it all to be ready. We officially publicly introduced the program on the 18th of May to celebrate Museum Day. We had people from the Ministry of Education, from the Ministry of Culture, all kinds of people at the official explanation of this new program. People are like, chomping at the bits to get it going. But they have asked us to wait until the entire program is complete. And I don't want to rush it; things take a long time to get done in this sense, especially if you want them to be permanent. So we're spending all the necessary time creating it.

But definitely, it's permanent. It’s not considered something that will be temporary, just during the pandemic. It's something that's being designed to be used during this period of time. And now, many schools are closing again. It hasn't happened yet in Costa Rica, but like the United States and parts of Europe, everything is going back to mask restrictions and closing schools. But who knows what's going to happen in a month or two. And that means schools could be closed again. And so we know that this is a tool that will be used if we ever have to go into this again. But it's also in our teacher training. And in the manual in the teaching guide. All of that explains that this isn't only for when schools are closed; it’s also to be used when schools are open. And for museums to use when museums are open, so yes, definitely, it's permanent.

Tonya: Great! My last question to you is, do you have any suggestions for a person or institution that has to start to reach audiences digitally?

Jody: Yeah, I'd say it's time to think of non-traditional ways to use video and ways that are more interactive. I know that there are lots of museums that have all kinds of interactive programs. We haven't invented the wheel. I'm not trying to say we have. So I, by no means, am trying to say that we've invented something new that others should establish. But we’ve learned some big lessons.

One is to reach kids where they are, not where we as adults are. They like to see attractive videos and they like things that are short. They like to be asked their opinion, not to be told what they should see. So that's what we learn to incorporate. And I think that's the success of our program. I'm sure other people all over the world have done that. But it's something that I would say we learned and that I think will make our program better.

Think of where the kids are, and know your audiences. I'm a senior citizen, and I wear hearing aids. I know if I'm participating in a group of 60 people, I can never hear the person who's leading the discussion. So maybe think of the fact that if you're dealing with senior citizens, what are the possible issues they could have, and what could help them? So, think of your audience and create programs with different audiences in mind.