Joy of Arts: Engaging Students Through Personal Connections (with Sandeep Johal)

Engaging Students Through Personal Connections for Elementary Art Generalists

In this session, Sandeep will share a lesson plan and walk participants through how to engage students using personal connections, familial stories, and local cultural histories. Participants will create a folk art drawing based on the lesson plan.

Time: 12:30 to 02:00 pm

Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose practice engages drawing, collage, textiles, and large-scale murals. Through her Indo-folk feminine aesthetic, she confronts themes of bleakness, despair and ugliness with their dissonant opposites: brightness, hope and beauty. Johal’s work typically centers around the stories of women and while she highlights female suffering in its many forms, these are ultimately stories of resistance and resilience.

Johal has worked on a number of notable site-specific commissions including a recent mural for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s inaugural #SpotlightVanArtRental project (2021), a digital projection mapping for Facade Festival produced by Burrard Arts Foundation (2019), and a 4,000 sf collaborative mural project for Vancouver Mural Festival, which centred around the Komagata Maru Episode and involved the denaming of the federal building it was painted on (2019). Her work was also part of the group exhibition In/Visible: Body as Reflective Site through the McClure Gallery and Visual Arts Centre in Montreal in partnership with the IMPACTS Project (2019).

Johal’s clients include Apple, Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, Holt Renfrew, Lululemon, and Earls Restaurant Group as well as the University of British Columbia's Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, the Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and Open School BC. She has been an artist-in-residence at Burrard Arts Foundation (2021) and Indian Summer Festival (2018) and is the 2019 recipient of the Darpan Magazine Artistic Visionary Award.

Johal holds a Diploma in Fine Arts (honours) from Langara College (2007) and a Degree in Education from the University of British Columbia (2002). She lives and works in Vancouver, BC.

To learn more: sandeepjohal.com

Joy of Arts Pro-D participants are all encourage to attend for the full day of learning:

9:00 - 9:10 - Welcome and Acknowledgement

9:10 - 10:00 - Virtual Keynote Victor Wooten in gym

10:00 - 10:15 - break (15 min)

10:15 - 11:45 - Break-out Session 1 (Session options for Music/Art/Dance/Drama with pre-registration)

11:45- 12:30 - lunch (45 min)

12:30 - 2:00 - Break-out Session 2 (Session options for Music/Art/Dance/Drama with pre-registration)

*Register separately for each session (including the keynote)