Water-related diseases cause millions of deaths annually around the world. In Africa 345 million people, and in Latin America and the Caribbean 32 million people, lack adequate access to potable water (World Health Organization; water.org). Living conditions due to unsafe drinking water, disease, and substandard sanitation define the global water crisis. This unfortunate reality has triggered questions that inform this project, such as how does the water crisis in the African diaspora inform art-space curriculum? How do participatory approaches to research and pedagogy create unseen opportunities to expand on the existing knowledge and strategies for educational engagement with the global water crisis? How can art teachers, through participatory and performative experiences with water filters, create opportunities for the students to situate themselves critically within the African Diaspora?

The collaborative project has resulted in an arts-based curriculum and instructional resources, a collaborative resource website, and qualitative assessment data. The curriculum and instructional resources draw on previous arts-based efforts, public performances, ceramic water filter receptacle exhibitions, and realities of the global water crisis within the African Diaspora. It also connects the US teachers and students with my colleagues in Dominican Republic and Haiti, and Honduras who produce and distribute ceramic filters through their non-profit organizations and work daily with communities. Important to this project are the implications of adapting previous work with the ceramic water filters to preK-12 educational settings through formal, sustained collaborations. This shift opens critical spaces to consider how the production and use of the ceramic filters might inspire unconsidered possibilities regarding artistic responses in other social, cultural, community, and educational sites.

The instructional resources—content, videos, and slide presentations about African Diaspora, global water crisis, water filters, pottery, microbes—are available through this website for other teachers to use in their schools to raise awareness of the global water crisis within the African Diaspora, the use of the ceramic filters to improve health, and to strengthen connections between African American students and the African Diaspora.