Last task for Noelle and I was to summarize our experience volunteering with the VABF over the weekend October 13-15. I was very glad to hear from Emma who’s also a staff of VABF again, because we haven’t been assigned any tasks after the fair for a while. I hope to learn social skills and to connect what we learned from class to society so I treasure those experiences with them.
- A brief description of who was involved, what happened, and what needs were filled or impacts made,
- 3 “lessons learned” for other students who get involved in community-university partnerships, and
- Any notes, ideas, or feedback would be greatly appreciated!
For this task, Noelle and I were going to answer Emma’s questions together and I found organizing thoughts together as a way to communicate our thoughts and to show our team work. So I firstly sent Noelle my collection of memories and waited for her editions. Then when we got final edition of it, I really felt it helpful on making my language and statements clear, and this is actually a chance for Noelle and I exchange our ideas on VABF directly and more officially than chatting. For example, I agree with her insights on VABF “works as a great analogy for the push towards transparency especially in terms of powerful/elitist institutions”.
Furthermore, this time for recollecting memories after three weeks made me rethink that the fair can be more than a volunteering or visiting experience for me, while I would like to connect it with other events I took part in during these weeks.
The impressed thing for me during those events was that I noticed lots of female workers and artists gathered together communicating social relations and their artworks, this reminds me of what I learned from my theory course on argument from Griselda Pollock who formed the strand of feminist art history scholarship employing the Marxist socialist approach and questioned that women disappear from the history. Whereas, as a female worker during VABF, I didn’t feel my disappearance actually, people were glad to ask me questions for VABF and I felt free to communicate my insights with artists or workers there. Over half of the volunteers were women, lots of female artists were gathering there, being respectful from visitors and being remembered for this event. I felt the art event welcome everybody with or without art insights here and this is fair enough to connect its property as an art “fair”. History might changed a lot that today women including female artists are becoming respectful with their genius and creativities, although I have to admit that there’s still gender issues in our society as when I was watching movies, I still find myself connecting male gaze which is a feminist problem last for several years…