Could a series of short films linked around a charismatic and endangered animal using music, dance, poetry and evocative visuals get more people talking about our relationship to other animals and one another?
We all know that what students are taught in school can have a huge impact on the attitudes and behaviors they bring to the world as adults. The motivation to create a trans-species empathy curriculum for middle school and high school students using the emotive and rich modalities of the arts – dance, poetry, theater, music, film – stems from the sobering reality of rapid species loss and need for global unity in facing climate change. But more importantly, The Elephant Project is being developed with a great sense of optimism that our educational priorities can shift to embrace a new mindset that makes being a human being one of global steward as opposed to what is implicated by so many messages within our consumer-driven culture. Humans are so much more than just “consumers.”
Elephants on the Edge, photo: Sam Matamua
The format of the project is being developed with curriculum advisors and education experts to make it a usable online curriculum that can be used across disciplines within both public and private schools, yet it is ultimately a curriculum which speaks the education system of the future in which cooperation, playfulness and creativity in all forms, holistic learning and out-of-the box thinking is encouraged.
The structure of the curriculum as it is being created is a series twenty short films viewable online which use the Asian elephant as a gateway to questions for discussion about the situation in the film, with readings putting the footage in context, and then asking the viewer to respond in an artistic form to the material in the films which is then uploaded to the website. The goal is to encourage using the arts to examine our relationship and obligation to other species, and empower the students to be part of an action-oriented group which then is more empathic not only towards other species including elephants, but to one another. The Elephant Project uses the wisdom and sensitivity of the human heart to expand our role as global stewards through the lens of the human/non-human animal bond.
“This is brilliant and needs to be shared worldwide.” Robin Farrin, ImageGazer Production, Ellsworth, ME
