Using templates from the artists' collective For Freedoms, high school students in the Santa Barbara School District were asked which freedoms felt most important to them at this moment, reflecting on the social conflicts and struggles for power, equity and justice in our country. More than 200 teens’ images in response to the idea of freedoms were assembled into a slide show that was installed in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s store windows in time for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Presidential Inauguration in January 2021.
View of the slideshow of images on a 60” monitor in the Museum Store windows, which face out onto Santa Barbara’s main boulevard downtown.
I introduced this project via Zoom to one group of 7th/8th graders on January 6th, 2021, the day of the insurrection on the Capitol. It was a rare opportunity to speak with students about stunning events happening in real time, on the date that also was the 80th anniversary of Franklin D. Roosevelt delineating the Four Freedoms in his State of the Union address. Presenting this project as a form of activism for the students in that historic moment was a powerful experience.