Overview and Purpose
As part of Día de Muertos, altars are created to honor the memories of loved ones who have passed. The altars are decorated with ofrendas: personal objects to encourage their spirits to return and join the celebration.
The purpose of this project is to engage students in an asynchronous, short-term, multimedia project in celebration of the Mexican Day of the Dead traditions through music and thoughtful expressions of joy and loss. Each student will create an individual ofrenda that includes multimedia elements such as a guitar recording, photos of a loved one who has passed, and video or photos of traditional decorations. These elements will be combined into a “musical altar” or short music video in offering and love of those passed. This project is extremely flexible. Implementation, scope and sequencing will change depending on the class.
This project may require video editing which you may offer to do for your students, you may ask them to accomplish on their own, or for which you can partner with an AV program in your school if you have one.
This project was led by Joe Williams and Salvador Garcia at Austin Classical Guitar in partnership with Mexic-Arte Museum.
The teacher and student materials and instructions can be found below at the bottom of the project page.
