Street Art-Graffiti Tour

The 8th grade class is always excited about the first field trip of the year, our graffiti walking tour in Downtown LA. We would take the metro and walk through Little Tokyo on the way to the arts district where we would be taken around to different street art/ graffiti displays. We even stumbled upon Shepard Fairey completing a wheat pasting on one of our visits. Something I and our tour guide were very excited about while having to explain to the students “you know the guy who did the Obama campaign posters?” This tour was one of my great accomplishments as an art teacher for it exposed the students to art outside of the museum and also opened the conversation about what constitutes art.

I use the company LA Art Tours for this field trip. Their tour guides were very knowledgable, the students enjoyed their stories, and booking was very easy. Before leaving for our tour, I found it important to discuss with the students different imagery they might see. The tour guides were aware of the age range, however, there is much to be seen and found a conversation before the tour helped. The day consisted of a lot of walking and, depending on the month you chose, heat so I highly recommend walking shoes, water, and a small bag to carry anything you or the students may need.

Pre-activities: some recommendations of activities to complete prior or after the tour

• Watching a documentary on graffiti and street artist
• Have students complete a small research assignment on the artist of their choosing (this helped on the tour when students saw artwork from the artists they researched)
• Discussing the difference between graffiti, street art, and vandalism (venn diagram, tables)

Art Activities

There are many different activities you can do as a way to connect to the graffiti field trip. I have done stencils, graffiti names, graffiti shoes, etc. You can even highlight a specific artist that you saw on the trip. Click on the hyperlinks to see the alternate projects that I have done.

Graffiti Names

For this post, I will be sharing the graffiti names that my students did after attending the field trip. For this lesson, I start out with a rough draft. Their rough drafts can be small and quickly done, but do have to have the elements they want to include in their final work (except coloring – waste of time and materials in my opinion)

Must Include

• their name (nickname, first name, last name, etc)
• stylized lettering (block, bubble, etc.)
• multiple colors
• background (even if just a solid color)

Materials

• paper (I choose paper on the larger side 11 x 14)
• markers
• pencils
• device to research if applicable

Closing

Once the students have completed their artwork, you can display them as you wish. I bought a brick backdrop to hang their pieces for the art show as seen at the top of the page. You can also complete a class critique since the students who generally go on the graffiti tour are in middle school or up. Click here to see my post about critiques to help.