2007-2008 grant recipients announced

In partnership with MetLife Foundation, the National Guild has awarded twelve grants totaling $210,550 to the following members to support exemplary arts education partnerships with public schools during the 2007-2008 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 their work, the same process an artist follows when designing and creating a site-specific public art work. 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.

• Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music: Berea, OH
  Through a partnership between William Cullen Bryant (WCB) School within the Cleveland Municipal School District and The Cleveland Orchestra, Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory of Music will provide music instruction to 350 K-6 students. By further developing the WCB String Project and the Cleveland Orchestra’s Learning Through Music program, this partnership seeks to strengthen and reinforce training and education, cultivate understanding of and proficiency in the arts, integrate music with other subject areas in support of mandated state standards, and engage an underserved population in orchestral experiences.

• Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music: Brooklyn, NY
  Brooklyn Conservatory of Music will partner with 4 public schools to provide long-term, sequential music education to 1,750 K-5 students. The Music Partners 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.

• Community Music Center of Boston: Boston, MA
  For nearly 30 years, CMCB has partnered with the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to provide general music education, applied musical instruction, and other arts programming. CMCB will work with 19 K-5 schools to provide high-quality music instruction and arts participation opportunities as well as capacity-building activities needed to ensure that schools can successfully administer and sustain the programming. 3,617 students, 19 principals, 9 teaching artists, 273 classroom teachers, and 7,602 parents/volunteers will be served.

• Conscious Youth Media Crew: San Francisco, CA
  This multimedia arts partnership engages inner-city youth in quality learning opportunities that seek to increase knowledge, skills and appreciation for storytelling and visual arts; use advanced digital technology tools to produce media; and develop voice for creative expression. Through skilled instruction, participation and presentation, the program will serve 50 at-risk students aged 15-19 attending San Francisco’s Downtown High School. CYMC integrates teaching artists, arts and technology training, and support into the DHS project-based curriculum for the “Hollywood Class,” leveraging professional expertise and artist mentoring to raise the overall quality of youth media. The project aims to increase students’ employability in a highly competitive and technologically advanced world and raise awareness of the ways in which art can be used to present issues, influence attitudes and opinions, and celebrate culture and identity.

• Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center/Lucy Moses School for Music & Dance: New York, NY
  The Arts and Literacy partnership between Kaufman Center and Manhattan School for Children (MSC) will provide intense, in-depth experiences in drama and music for approximatrly 400 K-6 students at MSC, as well as staff development for MSC teachers. The drama program will enhance the students’ ability to communicate on many levels; the music program will develop strong musical literacy skills; the professional development component will deepen teaching of the arts and set goals for student learning in the arts.

• Henry Street Settlement/Abrons Arts Center: New York, NY
  Henry Street Settlement’s partnership with the Lower Manhattan Arts Academy, a New York City public high school, provides 40 students in the 9th, 10th and 11th grades with intensive theatre arts training. In partnership with classroom teachers, Henry Street teaching artists provide high quality year-long, extended-day sequential instruction inclusive of performance opportunities.
  The partnership aims to strengthen academic performance by inspiring underserved students to think, learn, and express themselves through the arts. With emphasis on drama, dance and the visual arts, students will come to understand the value of team work, communication and professionalism.

• MacPhail Center for Music: Minneapolis, MN
  The Pathways to Performance partnership program supports every student’s highest level of artistic, social, and academic achievement. 375 K-12 students will participate in this music enrichment program at Whittier International Elementary School and Patrick Henry High School in the 2007-2008 academic school year. A fourth partner, the Wilder Research Center, will assess student outcomes. Results from the Pathways program have shown improvement in student retention and satisfaction with the program, increased math scores and overall grades, and higher interest in school and learning amongst participating students.

• New Orleans Ballet Association: New Orleans, LA
  The New Orleans Ballet Association (NOBA) and Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, through their new post-Katrina partnership in Orleans Parish, aim to provide a sequential program that provides alternative methods of teaching for classroom teachers and offers new learning experiences for students. Over the course of 25 weeks, this project will offer a curriculum based upon Louisiana standards and benchmarks for dance, social studies, and physical education to 75 5th grade students. The program focuses on dance elements, student’s individual heritage, cultural studies, and transmission of Louisiana culture.

• Samual S. 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 3 public schools in South Philadelphia for 325 students in grades 1-10. 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 project aims to foster comprehension, critical analysis, interpretation, enjoyment, and self-discovery.

• Spiral Q Puppet Theater: Philadelphia, PA
  Spiral Q Puppet Theater and Feltonville Intermediate School will work together to engage 250 5th grade students in exploring their cultural traditions through the construction of giant puppets and production of a collaborative parade for the community. The Lifting our Cultures and Families Project will be supported and investigated during additional class instruction in conjunction with English, Reading, Math and Social Studies. The partners seek to create a vibrant learning dynamism that dissolves the divisions between school, community, students and families. The project begins and culminates by fundamentally valuing the relationships between all of these entities, and provides a structure and opportunity within which, together, participants may learn, grow, and create.

• Young Dancers in Repertory: Brooklyn, NY
  Young Dancers in Repertory will partner with PS 149 in Brooklyn, NY, to offer the Learning Through Dance program for 160 third grade students and 120 second grade students. Students will explore movement, build confidence and respect for one another, and learn critical thinking and problem solving skills through creative dance. They will have the opportunity to demonstrate what they have learned through performances within and outside the school. Through professional development workshops, teachers from both 2nd and 3rd grade will learn strategies for integrating dance into their Language Arts & Global Studies Curriculum and addressing state standards for learning in the arts.