Students will be asked to look at the music traditions in their own lives and document them using various photography equipment and approaches. Students will use the subject of music as a way of beginning a conversation with a family member, whom they will interview and create a photo essay about. Inspired by the exhibition No Wahala, It’s All Good: A Spiritual Cypher Within the Hip-Hop Diaspora presented at Photoville from September 12–22, 2019.
PhotoWings Education Partnership
PhotoWings + Photoville
Education Partnership
Table of Contents
Photoville Talks
Photoville Education Artist Talks
Photoville Educators Exhibition Grants
Educator Professional Development
Bridging Generations: Intergenerational Learning + Storytelling
PhotoWings is honored to continue our partnership with Photoville as they celebrate their 15th anniversary festival in 2026. For over a decade, Photoville has been a vital platform for photographers, educators, and curators from around the world to share powerful visual stories that connect and inspire — a mission that deeply aligns with our own.
This year, the Photo Village returns to Brooklyn Bridge Park, with additional open-air exhibitions across NYC Parks and cultural institutions throughout the five boroughs. We can't wait to see what this milestone year will bring.
Congratulations to the Photoville team and their longtime partners — Brooklyn Bridge Park, NYC Parks, and the vibrant network of cultural spaces that make this festival possible. Here's to 15 years of visual storytelling in public spaces.
Photoville (amplifies visual storytellers and connects them to a worldwide diverse audience through its free photo festival and year-round activation of public spaces and educational community programming.
Since 2017, our education partnership has resulted in Lesson Plans and Toolkits, Resource Guides, Educator Labs, an Artist Visit Fund and Educator Exhibitions. We also partnered on the community organizing and public art project Community Heroes, a resource guide for the San Francisco photo show, My Park Moment, and the We Women traveling photo exhibition.
Our Education and Community partnership includes the Festival’s Education Day with field trips to the Festival stomping grounds in Brooklyn Bridge Park, engaging conversations with professional artists, and a series of lively youth artist panel talks known as the Youth Artist Exchange, all tailored to middle and high school students.
The partnership will also be documenting Photoville talks. It has also supported professional development days for teachers to design curriculum, educator grants, community-building family photography evenings, student photo-field trips, Educator’s Coffee Hours,Teaching Artist Microgrants, and redesign of the Photoville website and archive.
Produced by Photoville Education in partnership with PhotoWings and Abrons Art Center
Photoville Educator Labs are professional development workshops for educators to be inspired, connect and collaborate on ways to bring visual storytelling into the classroom. The program is free and open to educators of all subjects and of all ages, but the content will be focused on middle school and high school art teachers working in the DOE and in community programs.
Educators Labs:
Educators who want to bring photography and visual storytelling into the classroom can join free one-day professional development workshops. They can practice how to use photography in the classroom, learn strategies to use photography to enhance literacy, analysis and critical thinking skills and work directly with artists to develop visual storytelling-based lesson plans. Teachers can brainstorm and collaborate with teach across New York City and across disciplines. Download lesson plans produced by collaborating educators and artists.
Explore the Connecting Through Time Intergenerational & Family Storytelling Toolkit
At the onset of COVID-19, with a desire to create resources to help young people and families make the most of the time we were all spending inside our homes, Photoville invited a working group of artist-educators to collaborate and build resources for intergenerational storytelling. Kamal Badhey, Wendy Barrales, and Natalia Guerrero have each explored intergenerational storytelling with their students and in their own work. Bringing together their unique experiences as individuals, artists and educators, we explored why this work is valuable, ways to do this work, and the connecting & liberating possibilities of intergenerational storytelling.
This resource addresses three core processes in intergenerational storytelling: connecting, making, and sharing. Each section begins with guiding questions and offers activities and lessons. Also included are recorded artists talks and an inspiration bank of artists who explore archives and ancestry in a myriad of reflective, innovative ways.
This toolkit is made to be mixed and matched. Several lessons can be combined to build a longer project, or used as singular activities. The lessons are designed for use with groups of students, but can also be used with individuals of all ages in the context of your home and community.
Photoville Festival Education Day:
The annual Photoville Festival Education Day gives local middle and high school students an inside look into the exhibitions, artists and curators that make up the Photoville Festival, New York’s premier pop-up photo destination. The program includes artist-led exhibition tours, youth photographer panels, educator resources, including Photoville Fence Education Guides and professional development.
In 2020, the virtual Photoville Festival encompassed three weeks of programming where 15 Artists / Curators shared their work with 564 students in MEET THE ARTISTS sessions and YOUTH PANELS presented 4 programs to over 300 students.
Browse the Photoville + PhotoWings Education Resource library for free lesson plans and resource guides incorporating photography and storytelling into the classroom. These lesson plans were developed in collaboration with over 100 educators through the Photoville Teacher Professional Development Workshop. We welcome you to use these in your classroom!
Explore all Lesson Plans:
Loading PhotoWings featured resource...
Loading PhotoWings education resources...
Educator Grants
Building on 3 years of collaboration with educators to develop lesson plans inspired by photography projects, the Photoville x PhotoWings Educator Grants are an opportunity for educators in the UPI community to receive resources and support to implement a photo-based lesson from the UPI Teacher Resource library in their classroom and produce a culminating exhibition of student work.
We are excited and proud to share with you the inaugural Educator Grantees: Leigh Klonksy & Mariam Aryai Rivera.
They will both receive $1000 cash grant and a $2000 production budget. Get to know these phenomenal educators below.
Leigh Klonksy
East Side Community High School (Lower East Side)
Inspired by the UPI lesson plan Living City (NYC Municipal Archives), Leigh’s 11th grade Digital Photography class will create a new archive of the Lower East Side exploring topics such as storefronts/commerce, fashion, climate change, outsider/insider and more. They will examine historical photos and create new artwork and writing about their community, resulting in a series of accordion books and a public exhibition outside their school.
Mariam Aryai Rivera
Art Start/Nelson Avenue Residence (The Bronx)
Inspired by the UPI lesson plans Who We Are and Who They Say We Are (Griselda San Martin), Developing Self (Idris Solomon) and Hiding in Plain Sight (Brooke DiDonato), Mariam’s middle school program, co-located in a family shelter, will practice self + community love and identity, while learning the importance of consent and empowered creative decision making.
Photoville EDU Artist Talks
Teaching Artists Microgrants allow art educators to share their stories, knowledge, skills and ongoing practice. Due to COVID-19, many teaching artists have lost pay, work and access to students, while teachers are in need of online content for their students. The artist talks enhanced the remote learning experience of students, connected artists and teachers and complemented the Photoville Lesson Plans which will continue to be available online.
Artist Talk with Adama Delphine Fawundu
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Music as Artifact.
Artist Talk with Bethany Mollenkof
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Empathy and Photography.
Students will explore the role that empathy and representation plays in examining our perceptions of a set of photos. Inspired by the photography of Bethany Mollenkof, part of the Women Photograph exhibition at The Annenberg Space for Photography presents Photoville LA from April 25–May 4, 2019.
Artist Talk with Brooke DiDonato
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Hiding in Plain Sight.
Use photography to encourage students to see new perspectives on objects, people, and places they encounter every day. Based on the project As Usual, featured on the 7th Edition of The Photoville Fence, exhibited in public parks and downtowns across 8 cities in North America.
Artist Talk with Cinthya Santos-Briones
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Sanctuary.
Students will reflect on the themes of home, identity, family, and safety and tell their own narrative through images, text and audio. Based on the project Living in Sanctuary, a sister project of Abuelas presented as an Emergi-cube at Photoville 2017.
Artist Talk with Emily Schiffer
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan From the Inside Out.
Students will reflect on important relationships in their lives through photography and writing. Based on the project Kin, featured on The FENCE 2017 outdoor public art exhibition.
Artist Talk with Griselda San Martin & Haruka Sakaguchi
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Typecast.
In this lesson students will create a self portrait diptych inspired by the project Typecast. Students will begin by reflecting on their identity and stereotypes they inherited from the world around them. After reflecting on their personal and public identities, students will examine the work of Typecast drawing conclusion to the artists’ overall concept. Lastly, students will use their analyses of Typecast as inspiration for their own diptych featuring their typecast self versus their ideal self. Inspired by the project Typecast at Photoville from September 12–22, 2019.
Artist Talk with Idris Solomon
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Developing Self.
Students will slow down their image-making process and use technology that requires deliberate staging of photographs. Students will explore what it means to be the authors and subjects of artistic and historical study. This project aims to activate and inspire personal agency and self-expression. Based on the project Blackbirds, featured on the 7th Edition of The Photoville Fence, exhibited in public parks and downtowns across 8 cities in North America.
Artist Talk with Janna Ireland
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Portrait of a Space.
Students will create a photo story that personifies a space that they choose or claim as their own using abstraction and other compositional techniques. Inspired by the project There is only one Paul R. Williams presented by Janna Ireland at The Annenberg Space for Photography presents Photoville LA from April 25–May 4, 2019.
Artist Talk with Lluvia Higuera
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Forming Your Identity.
Through collaborative portraiture, students will consider people who have influenced and inspired them reflecting on how their identities have been shaped, and how they want to pay it forward. Inspired by the project Shaping a Dialogue for Change presented at The Annenberg Space for Photography presents Photoville LA from April 25–May 4, 2019.
Artist Talk with Makeba Rainey
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Selfie#Selfie#Collage#Me. Students will reflect on their public/private identities, and create a collage-based self-portrait. Based on the project The Soul(s) Of, exhibited at Photoville from September 13–23, 2018 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Artist Talk with Sara Bennett
This artist talk accompanies the Photoville lesson plan Understanding Self. Students will reflect on a difficult time in their lives when they had to overcome adversity, using photography and text to represent their experience. Based on the project Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project, exhibited at Photoville from September 13–23, 2018 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Explore the We, Women Educational Resource Guide
The We, Women photo-based exhibition, created in collaboration with communities across the U.S., tells stories about crucial issues on the minds of many Americans: immigration, education, climate change, race, motherhood and family, gun control, healthcare, religion, criminal justice reform, gentrification, sexual assault, and more. The project expands inclusiveness in the visual media landscape as it envisions solutions. The exhibition is now LIVE with its first stop in New York City! As educational partner for the exhibition, PhotoWings invites you to download the Education Resource Guide.
Explore the My Park Moment Educator Handbook
The My Park Moment Photo Show celebrates our local and national parks, and the great memories and diverse experiences we all have in them. It turns the microphone over to people from communities across the Bay Area and beyond to share what makes parks special to them.
This Education Resource Guide accompanies the My Park Moment exhibition on view at the Presidio. You might use this guide as an introduction to the exhibition, as a follow-up to your visit, or as a virtual way to experience the work of these artists.
Download the "My Park Moment" Education Resource Guide.
The introductory questions invite you to explore and discuss the exhibition. Individual artist pages for the 4 Visual Story Award winners include project descriptions, artist bios, guiding questions, and more. We hope that these materials enhance your experience of the exhibition and prompt meaningful discussions.
This large-scale, outdoor exhibition is made up of 400 photos shared by a large and diverse group of people, including everyday park goers, teenagers, and professional photographers. Hand-picked by a distinguished group of creators and community leaders from thousands of submissions, these beautiful, inspiring images capture the beauty of the great outdoors and the joy that time in nature can bring. The show invites one and all to explore, celebrate, and reflect on the role parks play in our lives.