By Bob Sutter, VEV
As we look forward to an exciting year of transition for the Chicago Architecture Foundation, let’s also celebrate a very successful first full calendar year for the CAF’s new Education Guide program in 2017.
Three classes of volunteers have now completed the Education Guide training program developed and facilitated by Gabrielle Lyon (VP of Education & Experience), Angela Esposito (Manager of Studio Programs) and Rebecca Milham (Education Coordinator).
CAF now has a highly engaged team of 41 guides, many of whom are former educators, with a dash of healthcare, marketing, communications and (of, course) architectural and engineering professionals spicing up the mix. Seven guides are doing double duty as CAF docents.
The guides lead 90-minute field trips in and around the Loop for school and camp groups, including K-12 students, teachers and chaperones. The guides also assist CAF staff in hosting design studio workshops and family festivals.
The field trips are conversational as the guides interact with students in interpreting the art and science at the heart of Chicago’s architecture, history, and its built environment. CAF currently offers three distinct student walking tours:
Student Loop: Helping students learn to “read” the skin, structure, and context of seven significant buildings (Railway Exchange, CNA, Wabash Roosevelt Tower, Harold Washington Library, Monadnock, Federal Center, and Marquette).
Art in Architecture: Encouraging younger students to practice “visual note taking” by sketching the ornamentation of three diverse historic sites (Art Institute, Harold Washington Library, Federal Center including Calder’s Flamingo).
Science in Architecture: Explaining how architects have harnessed the forces of tension and compression via seven key structural elements (column, column and beam, cantilever, truss, arch, vault and dome). The session includes a 45-minute classroom workshop followed by 45 minutes of observing examples of the seven structures inside and outside buildings in the Loop.
As with the adult walking tours, CAF Education staff is currently working to re-design and re-route the student field trips based on the new CAC departure point.
As the culmination of a very productive first year of the Education Guide program, the volunteer team also led student tours of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Over the course of 12 weeks, the guides and CAF staff engaged 2850 students and 590 teachers/chaperones from over 100 Chicago schools in exploring the installations throughout the Cultural Center.
Combining the regular walking and Biennial tours over the course of 2017, Education Guides led approximately 520 individual field trips, and engaged more than 5,000 Chicagoland students in conversations about why design matters in their hometown.
Impressive achievements, indeed, for the first full year of the Education Guide program and the best is yet to come as the curriculum evolves and positive buzz spreads throughout the local education community.
Education Guides! Thanks so much for all your dedication to the Chicago Architecture Biennial field trips this fall. You opened the door of contemporary architecture to thousands of Chicago students who otherwise may not have explored this new world. Your enthusiasm is inspiring!