How We Perceive Other Cultures

Have you ever traveled somewhere and you noticed people do things differently which seems strange? E.g. in India they don’t use seat belt in cars; or on your holiday in Mexico you saw young children selling sea shells on the beach instead of being in school?

 I asked three art glasses from grade 9 to 12 to draw, paint and illustrate one cultural aspect accompanied with a short description on a paper folded in half.  I have received a whole range of works from colourful paintings to quick pencil sketches.

By doing this exercise it has helped students conceptualise and visualize their ideas. It has helped me understand how we experience other cultures - how we all tend to get stuck on something we might see and generalise it for the whole country - and also seeing their type of education and each individual thought processes. The decisions they made about where to place the text, pen or pencil, the presentation and handwriting tells a lot also.

I had conversations with sensitive and perceptive students who have endless ideas whilst others are stuck and do not remember or have not encountered other cultures.

One girl was really stuck, she had never traveled outside Canada, she had not noticed anything different when interacting with international students, she did not see or read about anything on TV that had taught her about another culture, and when I asked her where she wanted to travel to she had no idea, ‘anywhere’.

There was also a ‘cool’ table where no one progressed much, they were too busy messing around and talking to each other. They did not try very hard to attempt the project, although they had initial ideas and begun sketching.

I look forward to doing this task with younger children in Elementary school and with adults too and how age group differs how you perceive and express that through art.