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Creative Music Expression

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Arts Adventures: Music Expression and Exploration has kicked off in Portsmouth in the second year of a three-year partnership with Families of Autistic Children in Tidewater (FACT). The twice-weekly residency is designed for middle and high school students with autism to explore music, practice new skills, and learn with their peers in a supportive environment.

Teaching artist Cindy Aitken is leading the residency, guiding students in different activities such as playing circle games with rhythmic sticks.

Funding for Arts Adventures comes from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. The focus of the first year was dance and creative movement, with the residency held in Virginia Beach. The featured art form in the third year will be visual art, with plans for it to be held in Norfolk. There’s no charge for students to participate.

“We’re delighted to partner with FACT because the population they serve overlaps with a group of students that we prioritize with our programming,” says Chris Everly, CEO of Arts for Learning. As part of our mission to inspire and engage, Arts for Learning works to reach underserved students, including those with intellectual or physical disabilities.

The Music Expression residency concludes in mid-December with a special “perform and inform” event for family and friends.

Support our efforts by donating here—because all students deserve access to quality arts education!

A Summer to Remember

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At the start of this Labor Day weekend, we celebrate with a look back at a summer filled with all things art. Our artists and staff members were busier than ever, working to inspire and engage students in and through the arts.

A Splash of the Arts

Over the course of four Saturdays in July, 40 Arts for Learning artists performed at the Hampton History Museum and Mill Point Park. Hampton City Schools sponsored the series of free performances and activities for families and students. Given the enthusiastic response from attendees, we hope this will become a summer tradition in Hampton!

Frames and Games Summer Workshops

We partnered with Norfolk Botanical Garden for a series of workshops for kids, with our artists helping children create take-home frames using items from nature. We have two more workshops still to come on Saturday, September 10, which are free with the price of admission to NBG.  https://norfolkbotanicalgarden.org/learn/children-family-programs/

These summer workshops are part of our new Emerging Artists program for student artists who want to explore becoming a teaching artist as a career. Thanks to Bank of America for underwriting this new program. Read more here: https://bit.ly/A4Lemergingartists.

Summer Arts Camps

With hosting by the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, our teaching artists mentored students through four weeks of summer camps: musical theater, visual arts, and STEAM. Kids got the chance to create while having tons of fun.

Next Step to Success

In a new partnership, we joined with Next Step to Success to bring our Strings Impact program to teens. Teaching artist Tina Culver helped students learn the basics of how to play the violin. We also presented visual art instruction to students. Next Step to Success is a nonprofit in Norfolk geared toward underserved youth ages 13-16, providing after-school and summer enrichment to help participants develop the tools to succeed in life. 

Alternatives Inc.

We continued our longstanding partnership with Alternatives Inc. in July, providing a series of arts-rich residencies, including this one where students worked on our Arts + Learning Snacks’ mini-comic. Alternatives Inc. is a youth development nonprofit on the Peninsula whose vision is “healthy, principled, and creative young people valued as members of the community.”

Library Performances

Our artists performed at a number of libraries around Hampton Roads this summer, offering quality arts enrichment to children and families when school was out. Thanks to local arts commissions for underwriting performances in Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Williamsburg, and to the Portsmouth Service League for sponsoring two performances in Portsmouth.

Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation

In another new summer partnership, our artists presented 16 performances and 24 workshops to children in programs at the Virginia Beach Parks and Recreation Department.

Common Casting Call

Arts for Learning joined forces with The Zeiders American Dream Theater, Virginia Musical Theatre, Children’s Theatre of Hampton Roads, City of Virginia Beach, and Virginia Public Arts for a common casting call. Dozens of aspiring actors, singers, and other artists came out for this audition opportunity held the last week of August.

We thank all of our community partners who helped make this a summer to remember!

We also thank the individuals who support our mission as we try to reach more students through the arts while paying our artists fair professional wages. Join with us as we work toward equitable access to the arts by making a tax-deductible donation.

And make sure you don’t miss any news by signing up for our monthly newsletter: https://arts4learningva.org/

Happy Labor Day weekend to all!

When I grow up I want to be a… Teaching Artist!

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When you think of career paths for artists, you may think of an actor or dancer who performs on the stage, or a visual artist who sells artwork at a gallery. At Arts for Learning, we’re helping create new opportunities in the workforce by highlighting a different career path that’s not as well known—working as a teaching artist.

Just this month we launched a new program where we’re partnering with Hampton Roads’ colleges to recruit, train, and mentor students in the arts. The Emerging Artist program creates a pipeline of new opportunities for student artists who may be unaware of the potential career path of becoming a teaching artist for an arts-in-education organization.

Two Norfolk State students are the first to be selected for the program, which features paid opportunities for emerging artists to work one-on-one with students in various settings. Anjenette Britton and Asiko-oluwa Aderin joined A4L teaching artist Cindy Aitken last Saturday in the first of four workshops at the Norfolk Botanical Garden, helping children make nature-inspired picture frames. Asiko-oluwa is also leading a graphic novel workshop for teens Monday, August 1 at the Portsmouth Public Library.

The emerging artists will be mentored by Cindy Aitken and Katherine Willet as teaching artists themselves and by members of the A4L Education and Program Team. Molly Stanley, a former teacher who serves as Learning and Community Engagement Manager, will work with the emerging artists on classroom management and how to develop arts-integrated curriculum for students. Chief Operations Officer Anna Green will guide the pair on some of the essential business aspects of being independent teaching artists, such as knowing how to read a contract.

You can meet Anjenette and Asiko-oluwa at our final Saturday workshops at the Norfolk Botanical Garden: September 10 at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

 

The Emerging Artists Program wouldn’t be possible without the sponsorship of #BankofAmerica. Thank you for underwriting this program that will help create new opportunities in the workforce!

#BofAGrants

Arts for Learning Awarded Major Grant To Use Art to Build Community Among Students Affected by the Pandemic

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Arts for Learning (A4L) is pleased to announce it has received the largest grant in its organization’s 68-year history. Over the next three years, the $97,500 Cultural Vitality grant from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation will fund a series of arts-integrated afterschool programs at high-need schools in south Hampton Roads, guided by Arts for Learning’s professional teaching artists.

The project is named IDEAL, Intentional Designs of Expression in Artistic Languages, and will target fifth-grade students in the critical year before they transition to middle school. During the course of each ten-week residency, students will create multiple mixed media works of art as they explore various aspects of self-identity through dance, written and spoken poetry, and visual art. Approximately 270 students from nine different elementary schools are expected to participate, drawn from the Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk Public School divisions, with one school per division taking part each year. Students will have the opportunity to collaborate with students from outside of their own schools and see how they and others impact and fit into the wider Hampton Roads’ community.

Meeting twice a week in 90-minute sessions, the students in each school’s residency will be led by Arts for Learning’s teaching artists who are experts in their particular art forms. A4L’s education and program team developed the curriculum, which is tied to various Virginia Standards of Learning, including visual arts, dance, English, and social-emotional learning. The program’s highlight each year will be a collaborative art exhibit of student work from all three schools, hosted by the Chrysler Museum. 

“To bring students to the museum and show them it’s their place to have a voice is just an amazing opportunity,” said Anna Green, chief operations officer for Arts for Learning. “It may inspire them to go on and create art or find their voice in writing or in other ways, and they’ll also learn how to build pieces of community within where they live, outside of where they live, and then bring it all together into one. There will be 270 students that will see their work professionally hung in a professional museum. I can’t even bring words to how important that is, to make the museum accessible and for students to feel like they’re a part of a larger community.”

In addition to helping students develop creative and artistic talents, the IDEAL project is designed to increase students’ self-worth, while improving their academic performance and decreasing absenteeism and problem behaviors. For students entering adolescence, the year before middle school is a crossroads, as they are faced with choices that impact their future selves academically, socially, and physically. Decades of research connects positive self-worth with a reduction in risky behaviors. With studies showing the pandemic’s devastating toll on students—along with a disturbing rise in crime—the need is great to provide effective interventions that boost the self-worth of at-risk students at a critical life stage.

“We’re looking to reach the students who are struggling, to give them that hands-on opportunity to discover their voice through the arts and to broaden their view of community,” Green said. She pointed out that the fifth-graders who will participate in the first year of the project entered the pandemic as second-graders, missing out on the key socialization and building of community that typically happens during third and fourth grades.

Collaboration is a central feature of the IDEAL project: among student peers within the same school and other schools, and among Arts for Learning and its community partners—the Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Suffolk school divisions, the Chrysler Museum, and the Richmond Ballet. Partnering with the Richmond Ballet and the Chrysler will deepen each student’s artistic experience.

The Richmond Ballet will present a series of in-school performances for third to fifth graders enrolled at each school, reaching a larger community of students beyond those participating in the residencies.

The Chrysler will present a virtual gallery talk on art works that exemplify human expression, examining elements such as color, line, shape, and composition that students can use to inspire their own sketches. In addition, by hosting exhibits each year of student artwork created during the project, the Chrysler will bring together students from all of the schools, along with their families. Students will be transported to and from the event by bus at no cost, so that each has the opportunity to attend.

The IDEAL project is the largest and most ambitious in Arts for Learning’s history,” said Christine Everly, A4L’s chief executive officer. “We’re excited to partner with two other respected arts organizations and three of our school divisions in Hampton Roads.  And we’re proud and humbled that the Hampton Roads Community Foundation has placed its trust in us by funding this project.”

No student will be charged a fee to participate in the IDEAL program. The first three residencies are expected to launch in the spring of 2023.

A Program that Makes a Real Impact

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A Churchland student named Legend gets fitted for a violin during his first lesson.

After two years of being shut down because of the pandemic, Strings Impact is up and running again in Portsmouth Public Schools!

We’re celebrating a successful kickoff of this long-running residency that introduces fourth, fifth, and sixth graders to playing the violin, with instruments provided by the schools.

The program is taking place after-school at Churchland, Lakeview, and Simonsdale Elementary Schools, with students taking one 90-minute lesson a week for twelve weeks. At the end of the residency, each set of students will show off what they’ve learned in a special concert for family and friends.

Tina Culver, a fulltime music teacher at Churchland Elementary School, is the A4L teaching artist for the Churchland Strings Impact residency. Although she didn’t grow up in Portsmouth, she says the opportunity to learn the violin changed the course of her life.

“I had such a wonderful experience from the moment I started playing the violin in the fifth grade—I just hit the ground running, and I was involved in all different kinds of music programs within my community, orchestras, went on to the governor’s school, then went on to college and eventually took that up as a major.

If there hadn’t had been programs like this available for me,  my childhood would have been so much different.”

That’s why Tina feels so strongly about programs like this that expose underserved students to quality arts education. “For Portsmouth, I feel it’s important to be a part of the program because a lot of those kids are not normally getting access to classical music or to string instruments,” she says. And by having her as a teacher, students “see someone who looks like themselves, someone who’s young, someone who’s positive and energetic, and someone who tries to make it fun and interesting.”

John Jenkins is the teaching artist for the Lakeview and Simonsdale Elementary residencies. He works as a band teacher at Manor High School in Portsmouth. Altogether, 52 students are participating in the three residencies, with a waiting list of 14 students at Churchland. The enthusiasm is high among all the students—one girl writes that she may want to be a professional violinist when she grows up!

Strings Impact began about 17 years ago after starting at Westhaven Elementary School in Portsmouth. It has rotated among different schools since then.

We want to thank the E.C. Wareheim Foundation and Portsmouth Public Schools for underwriting the Strings Impact program!

Simonsdale Elementary School principal Tammy King attends the first session of the residency.

Do you want to support arts education for students who may not otherwise experience it? You can make your tax-deductible gift by clicking here.