MLAB MISSION STATEMENT


The Mobile Literacy Arts Bus (MLAB) is an artist-run, renovated recreational vehicle that exists as a flexible space open to community members’ proposals for alternative educational and cultural programming.

MLAB is the collaborative effort of the 2007-2008 Social Sculpture class at Syracuse University, comprised of 10 art and architecture students and lead by artist and Director of Community Initiatives in the Visual Arts of Syracuse University, Marion Wilson. Our mission was to transform a used, 1984 Recreational Vehicle Bus into a Mobile Literacy and Arts Bus for use by the Syracuse City School District and the greater Syracuse Community. MLAB serves as a physical manifestation of Syracuse University’s Scholarship in Action initiative, by pairing University resources with community needs in an attempt to address the staggering drop out rates in the Syracuse City School District High Schools. Through the School of Education at Syracuse University, incredible curricula that bridge photography, poetry and literacy currently exist within the public schools-- however due to a crisis of space, the schools don't always have the space or resources to house it. MLAB is this space. The bus serves as a mobile classroom, digital photo lab, gallery space, and community center. As a team, we did it all: demolition, design, and construction.

MLAB is made possible from the generous support of the School of Education at Syracuse University and Entitiative.


Tuesday, September 4, 2007

M-Lab Course Reading List

LOT-EK Mobile Dwelling Unit. Christopher Scroates. Distributed Art Publishers 2003.

Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art. Grant H. Kester. University of California Press, 2003

Dialogues in Public Art. Tom Finkelpearl. MIT Press, 2001.

One Place After Another: Site Specific Art and Locational Identity. Miwon Kwan. MIT Press, 2004.

The Interventionists Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Mass MoCA Publications, 2004.

Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Suzanne Lacy.

The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. Lucy Lippard.

Culture in Action: A Public Art Program of Sculpture in Chicago. Michael Brenson (editor), Eva M. Olsen (Editor), Mary Jane Jacob (Editor), Sculpture Organization (Chicago)

Understanding Installations: From Duchamp to Holzer. Mark Rosenthal. Prestel, 2003.

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