The American Love Project
The American Love Project engaged schools, organizations and artists in the U.S. and beyond in a version of our Love Lesson, generating a positive grassroots response to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
The American Love Project met a moment in time when Americans felt divided and traumatized by the Covid-19 pandemic, and increasingly longed for the light of love and hope.
How will we come together to solve the urgent issues facing our nation? The American Love Project, a 29 Pieces special project, created a vision—pictures—to show us who we are and how we will realize the promise of our nation.
The American Love Project expanded on the successful educational model used in The Dallas Love Project, a citywide art exhibit in which over 20,000 Dallas citizens created more than 10,000 works of art to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
This time, 29 Pieces shifted its focus beyond Dallas to a national audience, leading educators, students, artists and non-artists across the country in art-making and dialogue about the power of love and art.
The 29 Pieces team trained more than 1250 educators nationwide in a version of our Love Lesson(Opens in a New Window), which asks participants to consider what the word "love" means to them after reading quotes about love by great peacemakers like Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and even The Beatles.
Although the project was aimed at K-12 students, Americans of all ages and backgrounds were encouraged to participate.
The project received over 4,000 art submissions from 24 states, the District of Columbia and four countries. On September 21, 2022, to mark the International Day of Peace, 29 Pieces launched a limited-time online gallery featuring students’ artwork.
“The opportunity to create artwork for The American [Love] Project was both challenging and rewarding. This teacher-student collaboration … brought back creativity and magical synergy that the Covid-19 pandemic had zapped.”
29 Pieces exhibited American Love Project art in physical displays at various locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, including Dallas Love Field Airport, the American Airlines Center, and in street installations along storefronts in downtown Dallas.
Schools, community centers and school districts across the nation joined in the effort to uplift students’ artwork. Plano ISD and Grand Prairie ISD in Texas, Maury Elementary School in Washington, D.C., Brassfield Elementary School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and others curated and mounted their own independent community exhibits.
The 29 Pieces team was blown away by the stunning artwork and overwhelming community response that emerged. We are grateful to everyone who participated in the project, and we hope that individuals continue to use our Love Lesson(Opens in a New Window) to form pictures of a better world for themselves and others.
The Love Lesson
This lesson asks students to make art inspired by the words of activists and peacemakers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Maya Angelou. What can we learn about love from these leaders of peace, and how can we demonstrate love at a smaller scale in our own lives?
The Love Lesson is part of Artists Making a Kinder World, our free art education curriculum designed to teach social-emotional learning.
The American Love Project Lesson, which was adapted from our original Love Lesson, explores themes of love and nonviolence through the lens of America's founding democratic ideals.
