UM-Dearborn students practice their creative skills at the DIA mobile interactive exhibit

Students arriving at the DIA Away mobile exhibition
(Photo by: Julie Taylor)

 DEARBORN, MI - The Detroit Institute of Arts, in partnership with the College of Education, Health, and Human Services visited our campus with its new mobile exhibit DIA Away:Think Like an Artist on March 16th, 2016. UM-Dearborn students and their professors enjoyed the interactive stations and the hands-on activities that lined the 53-foot blue expandable trailer. They discovered the different ways that artists think.

CEHHS Associate Professor of Education, Julie Taylor, 

DIA Educator Renee Nixon and Professor Julie Taylor and
during an art integration teaching technique activity
 with Taylor's students. (Photo by: Sarah Tuxbury)

brought to campus this exhibition that started in 2015 and travels the Detroit’s tri-county region to give people access to unique resources outside museum walls.

Dr. Taylor organizes visits to the DIA for students in her EXPS 410: Multiculturalism in School and Society course at UM-Dearborn and the History, Art, and Culture Program at Detroit’s Douglass Academy for Young Men. “DIA Away affords students the opportunity to explore museum resources directly and to think creatively,” said Taylor, who invited the DIA to bring the mobile museum to campus last summer.

Senior Jessica Rayappan, human resources and marketing major, participated 

Tyler Taylor, educator at DIA, leading students
in a discussion of art using Visual Thinking Strategies
(Photo by: Julie Taylor)

in this teaching-and-learning experience during her evening course OB 403: Negotiation and Conflict Management. “It’s a unique experience where we are exercising creativity of our own,” said Rayappan, “It ties into what we are learning, and I can see how it can be applied to critical thinking tactics. This is fun.”

DIA Away: Think Like an Artist is a free, mobile interactive classroom for students and a creative exploration space for people of all ages. DIA Away is a fully furnished, vibrantly designed double-expandable trailer that provides a rich educational program. Inside, participants discover some of the ways artists think and then have the opportunity to apply creative thinking skills at digital and hands-on stations.

Read full story at The Reporter.