ÉducArt, the museum for everyone, everywhere in Quebec

On September 20, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), the innovative digital platform ÉducArt was launched, which is made available to secondary school teachers.

What is it about ?

EducArt is an interdisciplinary educational platform for teachers in Quebec, an invitation to discover various themes from 350 works from the Museum's encyclopedic collection and through online educational resources. ÉducArt is the result of five years of work. The interdisciplinary educational projects are the result of a co-creation of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the school community from 17 regions of Quebec. In total, nearly 800 people including experts, MMFA professionals, secondary school teachers and students have contributed to the realization of this initiative.

Accessible free of charge, the ÉducArt platform offers 60 educational activities which are adapted to different levels and subjects and which correspond to the learning objectives of the Quebec school training programcoise.

The little story ...

This achievement was initiated by Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the MMFA. It is based on the pedagogical design of Mélanie Deveault, professor of art history, as well as on the financial support of Michel de la Chenelière. The Quebec digital cultural plan, adopted in 2014, as well asCultural development agreement of the City of Montreal in 2016, helped strengthen the team and accelerate the implementation of ÉducArt.

An overview of the platform

From the home page, users can access the different activities by choosing from among the 17 planets which each represent a different theme: OTHERNESS, HEART, COMMUNICATE, BODY, TOMORROW, CULTURAL DIVERSITY, ECOLOGY, FAMILY, FEMINISM, FREEDOMS, LIGHT, MEMORY, PEACE, RESILIENCE, STREET, TERRITORIES AND IDENTITIES, TRANSACTIONS.

In addition to each time presenting the artist behind the work, the interactive interface offers the possibility of viewing the photos from the museum's encyclopedic collection, reading the accompanying texts and viewing the video clips. . These discoveries can be made using two navigation modes:

• From one of the keywords associated with the 17 themes;
• From a timeline allowing the exploration of works linked to each theme in chronological order.

ÉducArt thus offers more than an introduction to art since an analysis grid is proposed to guide the student in his reading and his appropriation of the work.

ÉducArt: an evolving tool

A resource center is available online to facilitate the search for works, videos or texts using certain criteria. Teachers are invited to design learning activities using the iconographic and didactic resources of the platform. These activities thus generated will then enrich the bank of projects available to the user community.

Ms. Marie-Claude Larouche, professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières and Mr. Benoît Petit, educational advisor in personal development for the National Service of RÉCIT, are also working to prepare short projects that can take place over a single class period.

The platform is available in French and English. To involve your students in this creative and interdisciplinary educational activity, all you have to do is register. here.