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On behalf of the MetLife Foundation, the National Guild has awarded fifteen grants totaling $215,000 to the following members to support exemplary community school/public school arts education partnerships during the 2008-2009 school year:
Arts Council for Long Beach: Long Beach, CA
In partnership with Luther Burbank Elementary School, the Eye on Design program seeks to engage students in community development by demonstrating the power of art and artists to change and enhance the quality of life. 120 3rd grade students will participate in this sequential-based visual arts program during which they will plan, produce, and present artwork; the same process an artist follows when designing and creating a site-specific public artwork. The Arts Council works collaboratively with a select group of community partners to bring this process to life—where the community becomes the students’ classroom and where one’s own experiences lead to solving authentic problems in creative ways.
Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music: Brooklyn, NY
The Music Partners program works directly with students in over 40 of New York City’s public schools. This grant will help provide long-term, sequential music education to 1,760 students in grades K-7 at 6 Queens/ Brooklyn public schools. The program intends to improve self-esteem, problem solving, creative thinking, individual responsibility, and sociability amongst students. The program seeks to advance the cause of arts education by showing administrators, funders, politicians, parents and the community the benefits of arts education.
Center of Creative Arts: St. Louis, MO
COCA’s Urban Arts Program engages underserved St. Louis Public Schools students in multidisciplinary, sequential arts curricula that enhance existing arts and academic curricula and address specific school goals identified by faculty and administrators. This grant will help sustain and expand Urban Arts School Time and after-school programming at existing partner schools and extend the program to a new partner school, serving a total of 834 K-6 students in 3 public schools.
City Lore: New York, NY
In partnership with P.S. 11, Queens, the Telling Stories program will reach 175 3rd grade students in the art of storytelling through oral language, traditional dances of China and India, and dance-theater inspired by the students’ own investigations of the Chinese and Indian communities in Queens and Manhattan. The partnership aims 1) to provide culturally responsive, differentiated arts instruction to a diverse group of students which includes many ELL, special education, and new immigrant students; 2) to build a stronger connection between the school and students’ families and local community; and 3) to provide professional development that builds teachers’ capacity to integrate the arts and community resources into their teaching.
Community Music Center of Boston:: Boston, MA
For nearly 30 years, CMCB has partnered with the Boston Public Schools to provide general music education, applied musical instruction, and other arts programming. This grant will support 19 K-12 public school partnerships aiming to provide: 1) high-quality music instruction and arts participation opportunities - both access and excellence in schools that do not offer arts instruction across all grade levels; and 2) capacity-building activities schools needed to ensure that programming can be successfully administered and sustained. The 2008-2009 program will serve a total of 4,046 students, 19 principals, 9 teaching artists, 345 classroom teachers, and 7,608 parents/volunteers.
Fleisher Art Memorial: Philadelphia, PA
Fleisher’s Community Partnerships in the Arts (CPA) program provides high-quality, in-depth artist residencies and visual arts instruction to youth in Philadelphia’s high-poverty, urban school district. This project will support artist residencies at 2 public schools in South Philadelphia for 278 students in grades 1-4. CPA enables students, teachers, and artists to work within a highly collaborative framework to integrate enriching, curriculum-supporting arts instruction into all facets of the classroom learning experience. The program will help youth develop a strong foundation in art making skills while adding new depth to classroom learning.
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: Chicago, IL
The Focus School Initiative is a multi-year, school-wide dance program designed to change the arts and learning environments in Chicago Public Schools by providing professional development for educators, curriculum development, in-school residencies and exposure to professional dance. FSI provides each school with a highly qualified teaching artist who teaches a sequential, Laban-based creative dance curriculum for a total of 1,440 K-6 students in 2 public schools. Through annual research and assessment of the program, HSDC will create a process model for partnership and create inquiry-based dance education programs with school partners.
Ifetayo Cultural Arts: Brooklyn, NY
Through Ifetayo’s Arts in Education Program at PS 249 and PS 361, 384 K-3 students will receive sequential in-school arts training, 2 schools will benefit from in-depth partnerships that integrate the arts throughout curriculum, 16 public school teachers and 6 teaching artists will build skills in the arts, and parents will engage in hands-on programs that enable them to contribute to their children’s arts experiences. The partnership combines/ utilizes resources to create a holistic community that encourages youth and family development and directly addresses challenges identified by the school community. The objective is to collectively plan, implement, coordinate, expand, and integrate arts education services. The program strengthens schools, builds community, and stimulates the creative development of hundreds of Brooklyn young people annually.
Lucy Moses School/ Kaufman Cultural Center: New York, NY
The Arts and Literacy partnership between Kaufman Center and Manhattan School for Children will provide in-depth instruction in drama and music for 479 K-6 students at MSC, as well as staff development for MSC teachers. The drama program will help students to become more comfortable with interpersonal communication. The music program will develop students’ music literacy skills, and the professional development component will improve instructors’ arts teaching skills and help them to set goals for their students.
Luna Kids Dance: Berkeley, CA
Through a long-term partnership plan with 5 Oakland schools, this sequential-based dance program will reach 615 K-8 students aiming to educate and shift perception of what dance education can be in the public school system and unblock current obstacles to full-scale implementation. In addition, the program seeks to provide opportunities for collegial support, professional development and leadership among dance teaching professionals; increase the number of professionals qualified to teach dance (through identification, professional development and advocacy); bridge relationships between community dance groups (including traditional dance forms), college and university MA and MFA students, high school performing groups and dance teaching professionals K-12 to create dance delivery that is at standards-based and meets the unique needs of Oakland’s richly diverse community; and continue efforts to strengthen OUSD infrastructure for dance; and support the alignment of all dance projects in the district to state and national standards.
MacPhail Center for Music: Minneapolis, MN
Pathways to Performance is an innovative music enrichment program in partnership with K-12 schools that supports every student’s highest level of artistic, social and academic achievement. This grant will extend programming to 375 K-12 students in 2 partner schools in sequential-based music instruction. Results from the Pathways program have shown improvement in retention, satisfaction of the program, increased math scores and overall grades, and higher interest in the school and learning for participating students.
New Orleans Ballet Association: New Orleans, LA
The New Orleans Ballet Association and Mary Bethune Elementary, a new partnership in Orleans Parish post-Katrina, aim to provide a sequential program that provides alternative methods of teaching for classroom teachers as well as offers new learning experiences for our youth. By using dance as a core compoenent of life-long learning, NOBA will provide a conduit to the art of dance as a powerul modifier towards self-empowermant and social change. This program will implement NOBA’s nationally recognized arts integration curriculum in dance, which includes: 1) 30-week residency; 2) professional development opportunities for classroom teachers and arts educators; and 3) publishing and distribution of the comprehensive curriculum to schools throughout the region through partnerships, and professional development opportunities. The program will reach 95 students in gardes 3-5.
Phoenix Conservatory of Music: Phoenix, AZ
The Rhythms of the Heart: A Celebration of Latin Music! program aims to offer sequential, step-by-step process-based arts learning for 130 students in grades 1-6 that reinforces reading, writing, and math through a quality, process-based learning model; strengthen competency and technique appropriate to each grade that aligns with state and national music arts standards; builds relationships between students and teaching artists whose backgrounds and cultures are not too different from their own, making intrinsic growth and goal setting possible. The process will culminate student learning in the artistic process by having the students work with professional music performers in a professional venue and creating a work that includes original and traditional pieces that celebrate the heritage, culture, and soul of the Latin people.
Street-Level Youth Media: Chicago, IL
In a continuing partnership with Higgins Community Academy, the Mark Sheridan Math and Science Academy and the Chicago Children’s Museum, Street-Level Youth Media will provide 112 students from the 7th and 8th grade with media arts integration workshops in video and audio production to create original group media art work for the Chicago Children’s Museum permanent exhibit “My Community Matters.” The students will use media arts to capture their neighborhoods and cultures through their unique perspective and then document the process of taking action to help make a positive difference in their community.
Young Audiences New York: New York, NY
In partnership with the International Arts and Business School, this program will engage 150 IABS students in an in-depth arts learning curriculum focusing on digital media, music and literary arts as they relate to business and career education. The goals of the program are to provide experiential learning activities in project-based units of study in the arts in accordance with local and state curriculum standards; engage students in the creation of their own works of art; explore self and community through the arts; educate students about career opportunities in the arts; create a community of learners among both the staff and students; introduce students to cultural resources and institutions in New York City; and engage the community in the school and the students’ work.
