An Intercultural Peace Mural Project:

Lets Make a Peaceful World Hand in Hand!

BY JAEHAN BAE
Figure 1. Brainstorming Activity. January 2 0 1 2 / A R T EDUCATION 47

urals have become a powerful art form for portraying antiwar, human rights, social justice, and human dignity issues (Kaneda & Fischer, 2009). Educators and artists have conducted mural workshops with adolescents in international settings to educate them about peace, human rights, and cultural tolerance (Anderson, 1997; Colman, 2006). Learning with murals has been shown to be pedagogically meaningful in helping students better understand their ethnic, historical, and cultural roots and communities (Bae 2009); collectively find resolutions to a community's problems (Hutzel, 2007); and advance cooperative learning skills (Hubbard, 2010). Murals have been found to be effective in enhancing learning in a variety of content areas (Chilman, 2004). This article describes a weeklong workshop in which Korean and American students worked together to create a peace mural, and provides insights for teachers conducting similar work with an intercultural group of students. The workshop was intended to promote a culture of peace and intercultural competence among participants and help them develop cooperative learning skills, goals that are deeply intertwined. A culture of peace is one in which people respect each other and resolve conflicts without violence (Boulding, 2000). Intercultural competences are developed through interaction with people from different cultures (Bennett, 1993) and among its major goals are mutual respect, understanding, and the elimination of stereotypes and ethnocentrism (Barna, 1993). In cooperative learning, students study and work coUaboratively in small groups to enhance learning by achieving learning outcomes collectively (Slavin, 1990).

Implementing the Workshop

Introducing Molas As 1 had never before taught mural making, 1 researched practical and safe ways to execute the workshop. BraounReinitz and Shicoff (2001) suggested the use of fabric rather than paint for mural making with students, and this was ideal, because I had many diflerent textures, colors, and sizes of fabrics on hand and a very small budget. The mola art form lent itself perfectly to our mural project not only for practical reasons, but because it enriched the activity by exposing students to the cultural and historical significance of molas, part of the traditional dress of the Kuna people of Panama (Chanda & Marstaller, 2006). Molas are brightly-colored, hand-stitched cloth panels created using a reverse appliqu technique. On Day 1, students watched Paper Molas with Peggy Flores (Hubbard & Hubbard, 2001) as an introduction to the historical background of molas, and then were asked to reflect on their life experiences and draw a design for a mola. I showed them the assorted fabrics they could use, and explained how they would use the mola technique in creating their murals. Connection With Popular Culture Using music and lyrics in classroom instruction provides students with varied perspectives that allow them to make more sense of the class themes and the world at large (Goldberg, 2006). Moreover, using popular culture icons captures students' interest and increases their motivation for a project (Briggs, 2007). Because I wanted to use a song that relates to peace and to children, 1 chose Michael Jackson's Heal the World (lackson & Foster, 1991). First, 1 asked students to read the lyrics, and then showed them the music video on Youtube. The younger group of Korean students had a hard time understanding its meaning, so I briefly explained it in Korean. Minjoo,' nine years old, made the observation that a peaceful world may come about not only because of adults, but also children, because the video showed children giving flowers, a symbol o peace, to a soldier.

Description of the Program

In the summer of 2009, Korean elementary and secondary students visited the United States to learn English and experience American culture in a Midwestern town. As part of their experience, 14 Korean students participated in the peace mural workshop, along with 10 American students who joined the program to make Korean friends. The peace mural workshop was conducted during the second week of a 3-week summer program that included such courses as dance, photography, and cooking. Students in the 5-day mural workshop met for 2Vi hours each day, and were divided into two groups based on grade. The six Korean boys were in grades five through 10, and the eight Korean girls were in grades three through six. The American boys were in grades four and five, and the American girls were in grades four and six. Two of the Americans were Asian-American and siblings, one was Mexican-American, and the rest were Caucasian. At the time of the workshop, four of the 14 Korean students had attended school in the US for 7 months. All of the American students in the workshop attended the same Christian private school, with the exception ot two boys and one girl who were homeschooled siblings.

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images onto big pieces of paper and cut them out, then We began Day 2 with a brainstorming activity. To enlarge altered and trimmed their images until they were satisfied. the students' concepts of peace, I wrote the word peace on the Students then chose colors, patterns, and textures of fabric board and asked students to think and write related words. based on their plans. They used tape to place their paper This exercise allowed them to discover new relationships, images onto fabric prior to cutting them out. I reminded connections, and meanings. The older students, those in students of the mola technique they learned at the beginning grades six through 10, wrote 84 terms that linked with peace of the class, and encouraged them to make a few layers on (see Figure 1). They also wrote abstract nouns such as their mural images with different colors. I asked the students friendship, kindness, sharing, compassion, love, and teamwork. not to glue their images down on the felt background until Some wrote the names of historical events: World War II, the each member of the group consented to the final design. Korean War, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Once all the groups had completed their murals, I attached students also included slogans: give hope, all for one and one the four murals to the wall with Velero and displayed them in for all, nofighting,no homeless animals, food donation, love each other, and plant more trees. The younger students, those the lounge of the dorm where the Korean students stayed and American parents picked up and dropped off their children. in grades three through five, were very excited about writing on the board. One student wrote Michael Jackson and another All students had a chance to appreciate their mural and to compare and contrast it with the murals of the other groups. I wrote her favorite Korean singer's name. Once students saw was pleased to watch some of the students explain the murals the names, they started to sing and dance. Because they were to their parents and friends, and to see a few Korean students no longer attentive to the brainstorming activity, we do the same in Fnglish with their American host families. concluded the exercise.

Brainstorming

Appreciation o/Guernica
Later on Day 2,1 displayed Picasso's Guernica (1937) on a hillboard and asked students to look at it in silence for a few minutes. The younger group responded that Guernica was scary and that they didn't understand what it meant because of the non-realistic and abstract styles, chaotic compositions of images, and unusual scenes. The older group responded more precisely that it represented war, human suffering, and massacre. Because the older American students had taken a world history class, they knew about the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), which is an important historical context for the painting. I gave the students a brief historical background on the bombing of the Spanish village, Guernica. I shared that as a result of the bombing, many innocent citizens, mostly children, women, and the elderly, were injured or killed. I concluded by drawing their attention back to the painting, and explaining that Guernica is a powerful antiwar mural and statement of protest against the senseless brutality of war.

Themes of the Murals

The Older Boys'Mural
The older boys' group was composed of four Korean boys and two American brothers in grades six through 10. Their mural showed both a sense of unity and their individual voices. All the Korean boys utilized circular shapes and represented their ideas about peace through these images (see Figure 2). The two elder Korean boys composed images for the parts of the mural and the two younger Korean boys respected their leadership. The American brothers worked together, but they did not follow the lead of the older Korean boys. Rather than creating images of the earth, the brothers made images like hands, a smiley face, a tree, and the slogan "No war at all the time." Min, who was 14, put a clock motif on his image of the Earth and wrote the words that had been generated in the brainstorming session: Hiroshima, friendship, community, help, compassion, together, and happiness. Min stopped his clock at 8:15, the exact time Hiroshima was hombed, to draw attention to the tragedy of the many innocent people who died at Hiroshima, including Koreans who worked at a munitions factory as compulsory laborers.

Making Peace Murals

On Days 3, 4, and 5, the students made the murals. I began by dividing the older and younger students into two groups. The boys asked to work together, so the two groups were divided by sex, for a total of four groups. Each group began by discussing initial ideas, and drew preliminary drawings in sketchbooks. Each student was responsible for contributing images to the mural. Students fashioned small images of animals, the earth, children, continents, peace symbols, and weapons, and placed them on a large felt background. This large picture plane challenged students to enlarge their images to fill in the background. Students transferred their

The Younger Boys' Mural

The younger boys' group was composed of two Korean boys and three American boys in grades three through five. These boys demonstrated more mutual assistance than in the older boys' group, most likely because a Korean and an American student in the group were good friends who had attended the same school. The Korean student spoke English well and tried to relate his ideas to the Americans, as well as translate the Americans' comments for the other Korean

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above Figure 2. The Older Boys' Mural (74"x88"). right Figure 3. The Younger Boys'Mural (74"x88").

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boys. As a result, they exchanged more jokes and conversation than any of the other groups. Since one boy was absent on the last day, the group had to do extra work to complete their mural. They cooperatively decided to create bigger images and utilize some images from Guernica. Chu, 10 years old, used symbols and metaphors in his mural images: an image containing an eraser, a key, and a lock (see Figure 3). He came up with the images through conversations with a Korean assistant who assisted one day. Chu said he wanted to remove the border between North and South Korea because he hoped they would be unified. For him, the eraser symbolized the removal of military tensions and distrust between the two countries, the lock depicted a stumbling block to unification, and the key was the solution that would create harmony between the two Koreas.

girls created many words and slogans during the brainstorming session, they did not use them in their mural. This should have been addressed during the workshop in order to help them transform their conceptual ideas into visual images. Eleven-year-old Ko portrayed historical events and military tensions between South Korea, North Korea, and Japan. Her topics were the Korean War and World War II. A tank and military dagger represented war and tragedy. A peace sign on the map of the Korean peninsula and a broken pistol conveyed her mural's message. She also marked the location of Hiroshima on the map of Japan to memorialize the bombing victims there. The Younger Girls' Mural The younger girls' group was composed of four Korean and three American girls in grades three through five. At first, I was unsure whether the younger American girls completely understood the project since they had created images of animals. Upon talking with the girls, I learned that they had designed animals because they believed that animals never harm or kill one another, and they meant for their mural images to represent a peaceable animal kingdom. The two Korean girls, on the other hand, created images that represented unity, compassion, and friendship between Americans and Koreans (see Figure 5).

The Older Girls'Mural

The older girls' group was composed of three American and two Korean girls in grades six through 10. Each Korean girl in the group worked independently in creating her own images, while the three American girls worked together. As a result, three major areas in the mural could be distinguished: a letter of peace with an angel and the sun; weapons, and maps of Korea and Japan; and images of earth, a man, trains, and a lamb and a lion on a hill (see Figure 4). Although the American

Figure 4. The Older Girls'Mural (74" X 88")

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above Figure 5. The Younger Girls' Mural (74"x88"). right Figure 6. Rhee's Image.

In order to engage students with different native languages and cultures in cooperative learning, teachers must learn about the major impediments to intercultural communication, as well as the cultures of their students.

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Eleven-year-old Rhee's mural images and interpretations were noteworthy because she created a particularly evocative representation of a culture of peace, with compassion for the poor. Her motif centered on caring about others and her mural depicted people from many countries gathering tiny pieces of a heart, representing love, harmony, and coexistence as the core components of peace (see Figure 6). Rhee wrote, "Peace is big love" on her image of tiny people getting together to make a big heart shape that was about 80% complete. A circle surrounded the heart with a base that could represent the earth or a savings box. A big jar of hearts was almost filled with small hearts, echoing the donation process. Rhee explained that love should be directed toward the poor, endangered animals, and children who suffer in wars and poverty to make our fragile planet a better place for all.

great deal with their peers, although their conversations were not directly associated with their mural making.

Conclusions
In working together, the challenge for the Korean and American students seemed to relate to differences in both language and culture. In fact, there was little ongoing interaction between the Korean and American students, except within the younger boys' group, where a Korean boy with excellent English-speaking skills facilitated the interaction. The Korean students depicted the Korean War, the bombing of Hiroshima, and the South/North Korea conflict, but they did not talk about their themes with the American students. Nor did the American students talk with the Korean students very much about their ideas. In general, even though the Korean students spoke adequate English, all the students seemed to avoid interacting with others whose culture and language were unfamiliar. This lack of interaction is not surprising, given that one of the major stumbling blocks to communication between individuals from different cultures is high anxiety, which often results in withdrawal (Barna, 1993). Since I speak Korean, 1 heard a few Korean students complain that American students did not follow the group's agreements and just did what they wanted, a comment that may reflect different cultural expectations related to autonomy (Bennett, 1993). With a few alterations, however, the learning potential associated with the intercultural nature of the work.shop can be maximized. In future workshops, I will have Korean and American students work together in pairs to create an image before joining with others to create a group mural. By working cooperatively in pairs, Korean and American students will have lo engage in ongoing, one-on-one interaction as they share and negotiate their ideas. Before having students begin the project, however, I will add an ice-breaker exercise that will require the assigned pairs to discover some similarities and differences between them, as such an awareness is one of the first steps in the development of intercultural competence (Bennett, 1993). Another change would involve creating a schedule that would allow time for an art criticism component at the end of the workshop to enable students to reflect on what they learned and provide feedback for the teacher. Despite displaying

Visual Presentations
I noticed an interesting difference in the visual presentations of peace created by the Korean and American students. In general, the images of the Korean students reflected an interest in the outside world, international relationships, networking, and international historical events such as World War II, the Korean War, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the unification of South and North Korea. They frequently used national flags, images of maps, images of the earth, and human chains. American students, by contrast, focused more on personal interests using images such as friendships, the natural environment, and the love of animals. Thus, while the Korean students' peace topics tended to reflect broader international concerns, the American students' peace topics lay more within the boundaries of their localized and personal experiences of friendships, family, and school. The reason for this divergence may relate to the different cultural, political, and economic contexts of Korea and the US. The intense competition in Korean society and its traditional Confucian value on education, combined with Korea's limited natural resources, dense population, and fierce competition for college admission and job opportunities, means that each individual's welfare depends on being well-educated and highly knowledgeable. In Korea, the more a person knows about other countries, the more he or she is considered to be learned. Further, because the South Korean economy relies heavily on international trade, young people in South Korean learn to be sensitive to the developments and tensions between other countries. This awareness was clearly reflected in the work of the Korean students participating in the mural workshop. Conversely, the American students' tendency to create images within a personal rather than global context may reflect another perceptionthat what happens in the rest of the world is removed from their well-being as citizens of the US.

Ohservations
Work Patterns
The group of older boys first discussed the alignment of the primary image of the mural and then individually designed different images of the earth, providing viewers a unified vision as well as individual representations of peace (see Figure 2). In the young girls' group, the American students produced animals together, while the Korean students worked individually, resulting in a mural with five different clusters of images (see Figure 5). Similarly, in the older girls' group, the American girls worked together, while each Korean girl created images on her own (see Figure 4). The group of young boys seemed moreflexible;most worked individually, although one boy who had finished his images helped another who was still working on his. Overall, the students worked both cooperatively and individually within their groups, although the American students tended to engage more with each other than did the Korean students, who mainly worked individually. The older Korean boys worked individually after first coming to a consensus; the older and younger Korean girls worked individually without any consensus. In contrast with the Korean students, who did not talk much with each other during the workshop, the American students talked a

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all the murals at the end of the workshop, the lack of time for such an art criticism activity made it difficult for me to explore what the students had learned and how they felt ahout the workshop. Art educators who wish to execute this sort of workshop with students of different cultures should be aware that intercultural communication and understanding often do not occur spontaneously and naturally. In order to engage students with different native languages and cultures in cooperative learning, teachers must learn about the major impediments to intercultural communication, as well as the cultures of their students. Although it is difficult to know if the work.shop will have a lasting positive impact on both groups of students, I

believe there was value in having students work with the themes "world peace" and "culture of peace," which are so meaningful for future generations. Further, conducting the peace mural project within a cooperative and intercultural environment enriched the opportunities for student growth. Of course, a single content area and short-term workshop is not enough. Peace themes, cooperative learning approaches, and intercultural competence principles should be integrated into the teaching of many subjects in school curricula. If schools and teachers assist students in internalizing a culture of peace through activities designed to promote cooperation and intercultural understanding, young people can apply this knowledge to many facets of their lives, contributing to the construction of a better future for all.

Jaehan Bae is Assistant Professor of Art Education at The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, He can be reached at baej@uwosh.edu
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The author would like to thank Dr. Harpring, Dr. Anderson, Dr. Strauch-Nelson, Dr. Hoeterle, and Dr. Barrett for their valuable feedback and suggestions on the eariy manuscript of this article, and appreciates the efforts of Younmoo Lee and the Korean and American students and their parents who made this project possible.

REFERENCES
Anderson, T. (1997). Art, education, and the bomb: Reflections on an international children's peace mural project, journal of Social Theory in Art Education, 17, 71-97. Bae, |. (2009). Teaching with murals at a post office: A community's past, present, and future. Art Education, 62(5), 25-32. Barna, L. M. (1993). Stumbling blocks in intercultural communication. In M. ], Bennett (Ed.), Basic concepts of intercultural communication: Selected readings (pp. 173-189). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Bennett, M. |. (1993). Intercultural communication: A current perspective. In M. J. Bennett (Ed.), Basic concepts of intercultural communication: Selected readings (pp. 1-34). Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Boulding, E. (2000). Cultures of peace: The hidden side of history, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Braoun-Reinitz, J., & Shicoff, R. (2001). The murai book: A practical guide for educators. Hong Kong: Crystal Productions. Briggs, ). (2007). Celebrity, illusion, and middle school culture. Art Education, 60(3), 39-44. Chanda, J., & Marstaller, K. (2006). Harcourt art everywhere (3rd grade): Teacher edition, Orlando, FL: Harcourt. Chilnian, K. (2004). An integrated mural project. School Arts, 103(), 50-51. Colman, A. (2006). Integrating human rights and the visual arts: A peace education summer project for Israeli and Palestinian students. Internationai Journal of Education through Art, 2(1), 43-59. Goldberg, M. (2006). Integrating the arts: An approach to teaching and learning in multicultural and multilingual settings (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson. Hubbard, K. (2010). A cross-cultural collaboration: Using visual culture for the creation of a socially relevant mural in Mexico. Art Education, 63(5), 68-77. Hubbard, L., & Hubbard, T (Director). Flores, P, (Actor). (2001 ). Paper Molas with Peggy Flores |Motion picture]. United States: Crystal Productions. Hutzel, K. (2007). Reconstructing a community: A participatory action research study. Studies in Art Education, 48(3), 299-315. Jackson, M., & Foster, D. (Producer). (1991). Heal the world. On Dangerous |CD]. M. Jackson (Performer). New York, NY: Epic Records. Kaneda, T., & Fischer, H. (2009). The Kids' Guernica Peace Mural Project: A vehicle for social justice. In T. Anderson, D. Gussak, K. K. Hallmark, & A. Paul (Eds.), Art Education for Social Justice (pp. 195-200). Re.ston, VA: National Art Education Association. Slavin, R. (1990). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice, Englewood Clitfs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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TITLE: An Intercultural Peace Mural Project: Lets Make a Peaceful World Hand in Hand! SOURCE: Art Educ 65 no1 Ja 2012 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.