Overview

Goal: Analyze and create protest street art to showcase overarching government surveillance.

Description: During the course of several weeks, the English department worked with the art department to mull over and examine multiple forms of “protest art” (including bumper stickers, political cartoons, and street art), while reading Corey Doctorow’s Little Brother. The book focuses on protesting a malevolent and dictatorial government alongside extreme measures of government surveillance. Students researched, evaluated, and created their own versions of each art form ending with street art as the major end project. Students carved their own stamps and inked them on phone books. Their designs adhered to the themes from the novel. The end result is a college of prints creating an eye designed to resemble the shutter of a camera, and in the pupil is a monitor (CCTV) connected to a surveillance camera pointing at whomever is near the eye.

Subject: English, Art, Social Studies

Grade Level: 10

Materials

• Street Art Debrief
• Examples: Street Art
• Introduction: Political Cartoons
• Examples: Political Cartoons
• Introduction: Bumper Stickers
• Rubber stamps, brayers, ink, carving tools, phone books

Mastery Assessment

• Written explanation of print's connection to themes from the novel
• Use of textual evidence to strengthen connection to theme
• Portfolio of revised drafts for the print image