Teaching Printmaking as a Compact with Campus and Local Communities

This paper presents four community engaged class projects as part of printmaking classes at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. These projects range from a collaboration with elementary school students to conceive and design a printed and collaged mural for their school cafeteria, to projects in beginning and advanced levels courses that respond to, and address a range of issues including civility, free speech and sexual assault awareness on a university campus. Each of these assignments used the printed multiple either as a repeated formal element or as a means to distribute prints free of charge to the public. In addition to documenting these projects, this paper will examine at ways the hand-printed multiple can serve as a catalyst for community discourse while also posing a unique set of pedagogical questions in the teaching of studio art. These projects also offer examples of ways of giving students forms of community engagement that provide opportunities to apply their creative and design skills to address real world problems and issues through the printed multiple.