This Is How We Do It! From Madison To Johannesburg, South Africa

Guest post by Shiloah Coley, art programming intern at Play Africa, visitor experience intern at Madison Children’s Museum, Posse Scholar, University of Wisconsin–Madison

My name is Shiloah Coley and I’m the Visitor Experience Intern at the Madison Children’s Museum. My internship is unique because it is a joint internship with Play Africa, the only children’s museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. Play Africa seeks to bring families together in the Johannesburg area by providing a safe place where children can practice their right to play. I spent spring 2018 at Madison Children’s Museum, the summer at Play Africa as their art programming intern and this past winter, I returned to the Madison Children’s Museum.

I was tasked with creating a program that would facilitate cross-cultural learning between kids at the Madison Children’s Museum and Play Africa, without them ever meeting. I immediately knew I could do this through art!

This led to the creation of the “This is How We Do It” program where children in Madison and Johannesburg made art about their daily lives by responding to prompts like; “This is what I wear to school,” “This is who I live with” and “This is my favorite toy.” The children would draw a picture in response to the prompt and then write a sentence about what they did. The program was first run at the Madison Children’s Museum last spring.

After I was done running the program last spring, I packed my bags and headed out to Play Africa in Johannesburg, where I assisted with art programming for 10 weeks. I brought all of the artwork from the children in Madison with me so the kids in Johannesburg could see what the lives were like of kids in Madison. Then, it was their turn to work on the project.

Artwork from kids in Johannesburg

Not surprisingly, kids on both sides of the world, love pizza and fruit. While there were some differences — kids in Johannesburg wear uniforms to school while many kids in the United States do not and there were some South African food delicacies that aren’t commonly found in the U.S. — there were many similarities among the children in Johannesburg and Madison.

Coming soon in 2019, there will be an exhibit at Madison Children’s Museum displaying the artwork of the kids in Madison and Johannesburg! Families and children at the Madison Children Museum are welcome to create their own pieces, following the same templates used in the original program.

Read more about Shiloah and her work in this November 26, 2018 article from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, International Division.