New art curriculum simply to dye for

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/05/2023 (844 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg-based educator Ash Alberg is feeling energized after completing a two-week residency here in Brandon, where they got the opportunity to teach local students about natural dyes and carve out a new art curriculum in the process.

Having worked as a teacher since 2005, and as a professional natural dyer since 2014, Alberg said knowledge of this discipline in the Manitoba education system is still relatively limited, which requires schools to recruit specialists like them to help fill in the gaps.

“There’s actually no real resources for kids to learn natural dyeing if there’s not a teacher in the classroom with them who knows what they’re doing,” said Alberg, who uses the pronouns them, they, their. “All of the books [on this subject] are written for not even teenagers, but for adults.”

To fix this problem, Alberg has been working throughout the spring to develop a natural dyeing curriculum for school-aged students (kindergarten to Grade 12) through the Manitoba Arts Council’s Artists in Schools program.

This initiative has brought Alberg to classrooms in Falcon Beach, Winnipeg and most recently Brandon, where they spent the past two weeks teaching students of Valleyview Centennial School how to make natural dyes using local flora.

To Alberg, this experience at Valleyview further solidified the overall accessibility of making natural dyes in school, since Brandon students were able to pick this topic up right away.

“Kindergarten and nursery school kids are really the only ones I don’t dive too far into the science,” they said.

“But as of Grade 1, you mentioned just a snippet of [the science] and they latch on really quickly and it makes sense to them.”

Another reason Alberg is trying to push for a bigger emphasis on the study of natural dyes in Manitoba schools is because of its academic versatility, since it organically intersects with other major topics such as history and environmental science.

The environmental science angle is fairly obvious, with the making of synthetic dyes relying on harmful chemicals and petroleum products that aren’t sustainable in the long run.

“The kids are growing up in a climate crisis, so they’re much more aware of the role of sustainability and how important it is for their lives,” Alberg said.

However, this field of study can also serve as a window into the past, since the natural dye trade that dominated civilizations like Ancient Greece and Medieval Europe can be directly tied to the culture and politics of the time.

“We considered purple a royal colour literally because the source was a type of mollusk that only the aristocracy could afford to buy,’” Alberg explains.

Of course, to make the study of natural dyes a more consistent part of Manitoba school curriculum, Alberg will need to develop brand new resources like lesson plans and visual aids that provide teachers with some guidance on how to integrate this topic into their classroom.

While this process is daunting, Alberg has been encouraged by the response they’ve received from Manitoba schools so far and is looking forward to returning to Falcon Beach, Winnipeg and Brandon to continue their research.

If all goes well, Alberg is hoping to make this natural dye curriculum widely available by the 2024-25 school year and provide students with a colourful new way to look at education.

“I think art in general is just so important as a way for kids to learn different ways of expressing themselves,” they said.

“And natural dyeing is very hands-on. It’s very tactile. It’s also something that can be made accessible to all of the kids.”

Anyone who would like to financially support the creation of this new curriculum can visit Alberg’s official website, ashalberg.com/in-the-classroom, for more information.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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