Due: Thursday, May 4th

For this project you will use your op-ed/opinion essay (both the research you did and the argument you made) and present it in a multimodal text composed for a specific audience. You will then analyze what you have created in an artist’s statement.

Your final creation will go beyond the written word; instead you will communicate using multimodal composing. Think about what you want to say and to whom and choose a genre that is appropriate for your audience.

First, choose the audience you intend to reach. Here are some possible audience groups:

  • Fourth graders
  • City Tech First-Year Students
  • The Mayor’s office
  • Your grandparents or older relatives
  • An activist group (like BLM or LGBTQIA+ Youth, etc.)

Next, choose a genre:

  • TED Talk (include written transcript along with the video, use visual materials)
  • Wikipedia entry (include visuals/images)
  • Video, photographic, or graphic essay 
  • Blog post (include images and/or video/audio)
  • Informational brochure (include images/graphics)
  • Infographic
  • Social media thread (include images/graphics)
  • Poster with Public Service Announcement (PSA) 
  • Podcast (include transcript)
  • Interview (video or audio; include transcript)
  • Detailed proposal or script for video/podcast/etc
  • You might think of something else!

Remember, you are trying to reach a specific audience, so don’t choose the genre arbitrarily. You want to choose a genre that is going to speak to the audience you have in mind: who would be most likely to watch a TEDTalk? What is the point of a PSA poster and who do you think you’d reach with that genre? Who might be attracted to the information on an Instagram page with well-curated stories?

Additionally, write your artist’s statement, approximately 600-900 words. Composers of all sorts often write an artist’s statement for their audience that explains their inspirations, intentions, and choices in their creative and critical processes. You will write an artist’s statement that reflects on your finished creation for Project 3. 

Here are some questions to consider as you write your statement:

  • your purpose: why did you compose the work on that specific topic?
  • your audience: what did you understand about your readers, why were they an appropriate choice for your topic, and how did this affect the compositional choices you made?
  • your choice of genre: why did you choose this genre for your audience and argument?
  • your success: looking back at your creation, did you achieve your goals with this project? What would you change, add, or do differently if you had more time to work on this or more developed multimodal skills?

Here are the grading criteria for the Multimodal project:

Your successful multimodal creation…

  • follows the conventions and formatting of your chosen multimodal genre.
  • integrates the research and argument from your op-ed/opinion essay.
  • uses quotes and/or makes reference to specific data or facts from your research.
  • uses tone, language, grammar, and sentence structure appropriate for this genre and audience.
  • is accompanied by an artist’s statement that analyzes the choices you made and how you executed them in your creation in a substantial way, approximately 600-900 words.
  • has been carefully proofread, stylized, and polished.

(adapted from Dr. Carrie Hall, Ruth Garcia, and Suzanne Miller’s Multimodal Projects)