Media Arts combines multiple forms of communication such as audio, video, photography, digital arts and other interactive mediums. It plays off of creative elements like space, time, color, and sound to express perspectives, feelings, and ideas. Because of its dynamic quality to tune into the senses, it innately holds the power to create meaningful connections. Together with Nate Barnes, Marcus Allen and Gwylym Cano we'll dive into what this looks like in their Teaching Arts practice, how they see the Media Arts changing, and how their work with students evolves their work as artists.

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Teaching Artist Bios:

Marcus Allen and Nate Barnes, known collectively as Universal Sounds, are teaching artists with Arts for Learning Connecticut. Together, they specialize in transforming classrooms into virtual recording studios, aiming to provide students with hands-on experience in music production. Marcus and Nate integrate diverse forms of Social Emotional Learning and Culturally Relevant practices into their teaching approach. Additionally, they are Certified Kingian Nonviolence Teaching Artists, dedicated to imparting the principles of conflict resolution and peace inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., certified through the CT Center for Nonviolence

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Gwylym Cano has been a teaching artist, visiting schools and prisons across Colorado for thirty years. For 12 years Cano was a classroom teacher, teaching both film art and Humanities classes for upper-level high school students. He loves exploring layers of intersectionality and has a special teaching passion for the Chicanx movement of the Southwest, then and now, otherwise known as Aztlán. His video works (and poetry) have been exhibited at film festivals, art galleries, anthologies and zines the past 30 years. Cano also produces documentaries and videos for nonprofits and artists with video boutique Fool Moon Productions. Cano is a graduate of Yale University And notably beat Lewis Lapham at pool (one exceptional evening in the past.)