My issue brief is… well, I haven’t made too much progress with it since last week. But I have some ideas for my advocacy project that I want to talk about. My project will be about art in schools (I think) and one of my ideas is to make a cartoon video illustrating a story for the topic. It would take some time but I figured out how to actually do it and I think it could be fun to do something like that. I also think it would be something different that could catch people’s eye. However, I would have to find a way to do this without making it look too childish. I want people to take the issue seriously as well as intrigue them. If I decide not to do the cartoon idea, I could also interview people about what makes them “happy” and make this the focus of the video- that taking away the arts eliminates people of a source of relaxation and ways of coping with more stressful subjects such as math or even writing (although some people find art class, music class, or gym class stressful in themselves, or find that they enjoy doing math problems!). Even if people feel differently about the arts, the word, “the arts” includes all kinds of art forms and introduces kids to new ways of thinking. So if I interview people about what they find relaxing or fun, I can compile those, then present some hard info on the topic.
I also have another idea- the issue of Native American reservations. I went on a retreat with my church a few years ago and there was a Native American speaker who told us about appreciation of the land, people, and the world and it really stuck with me. I think the Native American traditions are interesting and meaningful, but extremely undervalued in our capitalistic society. For that reason, Indians are allotted their land, but do not have private rights to it, cannot own pieces of it, and the entire system is a mess but it’s easier for the government to just leave it there than to work on cleaning it up. I agree that there are many important issues that the government needs to work on right now such as the country’s major debt, education, etc. but I think this is an important issue to bring out of the works. Indians are oppressed in our country and most people don’t give it any thought. I could illustrate this one too possibly, or make a documentary-type video for it. There are many other possibilities for it as well though. I’ll have to think about it.
Both ideas are very interesting and can be easily developed into something with a great deal of substance. It seems to me that you’re quite interested in both, but what about both being one? Indigenous modes of learning are completely different from what we have now. It could be an interesting project (although native learning isn’t terribly creative, its mostly different).