2007-2008
Do Your P’Art Great Lakes Project

This year Do Your P’Art will engage 1000 young students from 30 schools in partnerships to study environmental issues facing Lake Michigan. Both the Shedd Aquarium and Wendella Cruises have partnered with us to help students gain hands-on knowledge of the Lake’s vital role in the community, the pollutants that threaten it, and what we can do to protect it.

Students will then use that information as inspiration to create artistic interpretations which will demonstrate positive courses of change. Resulting artwork will be exhibited publicly in May before returning to permanent homes in participating schools.

The educators involved with Do Your P’Art bring energy, creativity, passion and dedication to our shared mission: engendering educational, cultural and artistic growth in Chicago area children through collaborative work.

Do Your P’Art & Shedd Aquarium Collaboration

" Part of our mission at Shedd Aquarium is connecting people to the living worrld. By working together, Shedd Aquarium and Do Your P'Art can provide children with creative inspiration that will strengthen that connection.

Shedd Aquarium will supply a series of lessons to enhance the students' visit to the aquarium. The lesson plans will include pre and post trip lessons, as well as a focused trip to the aquarium. The pre and post trip components will be for the teachers to carry out in their classrooms to prepare their students for the visit. They will be hands on, investigative lessons and allow students to start thinking creatively about the natural world around them. These lessons will encourage connections between art and science that students may not have seen or thought about before. The field trip component will include investigations in the exhibits and the surrounding environment at Shedd Aquarium once again encouraging connections between art and science.

Working with Do Your P'Art, Shedd Aquarium can aid in helping students think about the local, living world in a different way and give them that creative inspiration. "

- Shedd Aquarium