Logo

The Arts, Education, and Society: An Interview with Drew Lusher, A4L’s New Artist and Programming Manager

By

You have a music background, right? When did your engagement with music begin?

In high school, Drew played the lead in the school’s production of South Pacific.

I was fortunate to grow up in an environment surrounded by music. My mother had a vast record collection, my favorite of which was an album of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos – I loved the blasting of the baroque horns through the stereo.

But in terms of making music, that really began in the fourth grade – the year I started playing trombone and singing in the school chorus and the year my grandparents first brought me to a concert by our local symphony orchestra (The Syracuse Symphony). I was immediately enamored with the soundscape of the live orchestra and the energy of the conductor. From then I was asking for CDs of Beethoven and Mahler (while my friends wanted CDs of Eminem and Britney Spears).

Of course, I was also fortunate to have amazing music educators who fostered my relationship with the arts.

Drew with his high school chorus teacher, who remains an important mentor.

So there really wasn’t a singular experience that sparked my relationship with music, I was blessed with an environment that fostered those early experiences.

You grew up surrounded by opportunities to study and perform. How did that connect to your later experiences?

By the time I graduated high school, I understood that participation in the arts was a collective activity. I was fully aware of the ability for these opportunities to bring people together. I realized that shared experiences build community. That was powerful for a young person, shifting my understanding of that cliché on how music transforms the world.  Well, the pitches and rhythm don’t actually change the world, it’s the ability of music and musical experiences to bring people together, unifying diverse individuals and perspectives into a single experience that helps change the world. That’s powerful and that’s what’s driven me since.

Singing with the Westminster Choir at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

After high school you then went to college – how did those experiences change your understanding of the ability of music to bring people together?

My time at Westminster Choir College provided me with the framework for better understanding the ways that music brings people together. While there I had amazing opportunities – recording Grammy nominated albums, performing in the Spoleto Festival every May, singing with Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli in Central Park, and performing with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center.

But it was the work with my education professors – one, in particular – that gave me the language and a critical understanding of society, economic and symbolic capital, and education. I specifically remember sitting on stage at Carnegie Hall during a performance with Gustavo Dudamel and I stared out at the audience, who were all dressed in tuxedos and had probably gone to fancy dinners before paying several hundred dollars per ticket. It occurred to me that there’s more to music than this elite, gilded hall. That’s when I really became animated about teaching.

After graduating from college, you taught for two years as the choir director at Grafton High School in York County. How was that experience for you?

Conducting his advanced choir class at Grafton High School.

When I began teaching it was important to me to not only emphasize the technical aspects of music-making, but also the emotional, the ways in which making music together could transform perspectives and inform experiences. That transformation goes both ways – for the teacher, as well. I was fortunate to have a group of African American male students who transformed my views of the social role of education.

They’re the ones who really got me looking at the connection between education and society. They were the ones who opened my eyes about the systemic disadvantages that come with being a member of a marginalized community.

I’m forever grateful to them for being open and honest with me about their experiences because it really solidified the importance of education in society. So, it’s kind of been like a triangle for me, trying to incorporate the arts, education, society and how those pieces fit together and the power therein of when they do fit together.

You say that your “whole focus changed” after you left York County and went to Germany to further your studies and see more of the world. Why is that? (Drew received a master’s degree in conducting from the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.)

In Germany, they emphasize music as something very sacred; it’s quasi-religious. So, the expectation is that we are there to serve the music as though it were a deity itself, and I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that music and the arts are there to serve us and they’re a means of connecting with real living human beings today, and so my time in Germany was a transitional period. I came back to the United States with this renewed purpose but also wanting to ask more questions and deeper questions.

Conducting for a German Radio national broadcast in 2018.

I can pinpoint the exact weekend when I decided to give up any dream of being a conductor or a fully devoted professional musician. I was invited to conduct in the south of Germany, in a town called Marktoberdorf – famous for its choir competition. I was staying in this old monastery that has been converted to a music center and there was this choir from Argentina that I was conducting. It was a great experience, but I brought with me a book by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and I was just so enraptured by his ideas on knowledge and society that I realized, as I was sitting in this modernized monastic cell, that my heart was in a different place.

I just wanted to sit and read and enjoy the sunshine coming into my window. It was springtime and I could smell the freshness of the earth outside and I was more focused on that and the ideas of the book than on actually conducting the ensemble.

I just knew that I was closing a door and I was doing that intentionally, shifting to something else.

Is that when you returned to Virginia?

Yes, I finished my master’s degree and the work that I was involved with in Germany before returning to Virginia. I became the vocal music teacher at Old Donation School in Virginia Beach and enrolled in a master’s degree program at UVA, studying Educational Psychology. The work I was doing in the classroom reflected the themes I was exploring in my studies.

At the Jefferson Memorial.

At this time I also became a researcher for the university’s Institute of Democracy, tasked with compiling data on the national landscape of democracy centers at institutions of higher education. I began to reflect on the idea of democracy, particularly what democracy means for different people and how communities of different experiences and perspectives engage with democracy. This matched exactly what I did every day as a chorus teacher – it was my responsibility to facilitate dialogue and engagement among all of the students, ensuring that each student contributed their voice to our collective mission.

When conducting an ensemble, there are layers of interpretation – there’s the interpretation I create myself, the interpretation the collective ensemble creates, and the interpretation that individuals bring based on their own life. The beauty of the music experience comes from negotiating those interpretations so that our performance represents what we want to communicate both as individuals and as a collective. That is what democracy is, the negotiating between individual and collective identities to ensure authentic representation.

So what prompted you to leave teaching and join Arts for Learning?

I’ve begun to think more broadly about arts engagement. While I loved teaching and loved the students, I would like to utilize my ideas and my experiences to help foster collaboration between organizations and communities to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to contribute their voice and reflect on their perspectives and the perspectives of others through high-quality arts engagement.

As I’ve been investigating the social sphere and the social role of the arts, it’s clear that students are sometimes not presented opportunities in an equal way. And so, it’s up to organizations – like Arts for Learning – to fill those gaps for disadvantaged and marginalized communities where the arts are a powerful means of helping students achieve but also to feel represented and to represent themselves.

What are your goals with Arts for Learning?

In working with the existing artists on our roster, in recruiting new artists, and in developing programming, I want to make sure Arts for Learning is engaging students in ways that are appropriate for 21st century learners. The experiences we offer students should be 21st century experiences—so thinking about what is relevant to our students today, what is relevant about technology in terms of the way we consume the arts, and what are the relevant values we-as-a-society want to promote.

If you’re thinking about only using music and musical experiences to prepare kids to sit quietly at the symphony, that’s doing a disservice to the power of the arts today and the ways that the arts can connect, educate, and inspire today’s young students. Students are willing to be engaged and willing to create, but they want experiences that authentically engage and authentically reflect them.

(An active member of the community, Drew sings in the Virginia Chorale and works as the staff bass at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and at Ohef Sholom Temple. Drew lives with his partner, Kevin, in Norfolk.)

Discussing music with the conductor of the Virginia Chorale, Chuck Woodward.

I’ve got to ask – you grew up in Syracuse, went to college in New Jersey, and then lived in Germany – why settle in Virginia?

Well, in the fifth grade I had to do a presentation on Thomas Jefferson. Through my research for that project, I developed this idyllic, picturesque idea of Virginia, this view of rolling hills and Colonial Williamsburg and Monticello, and so I’ve just had this fascination since then. I feel a lot of pride when I tell people I live in Virginia. It feels like an accomplishment of mine, which seems kind of silly, but I love it. In three hours, I can be in D.C., in two hours I can be at Jefferson’s Monticello, in twenty minutes I can be at the beach, and every day I hear the fighter jets and see the aircraft carriers – what’s not love? I feel like I’ve come home.

A hobby of Drew’s is collecting and reading biographies of complex historical characters. Last year he started reading a biography of every U.S. president chronologically and is currently up to Jimmy Carter. Sourcing books is part of the fun–Drew had to look all over stores in Washington, D.C. just to find a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes!

Guiding Arts for Learning: Lessons, Challenges, and Achievements

By

Chris Everly at the 65th anniversary celebration in September 2019.
CEO Chris Everly at the 65th anniversary of Young Audiences of Virginia, which was rebranded to Arts for Learning in September 2019.

Three years ago this month, Young Audiences of Virginia became known as Arts for Learning, a change announced to better reflect our mission as part of our nonprofit’s 65th anniversary celebration. We’re also celebrating another anniversary this year—Chris Everly became CEO five years ago in February.

Chris came to A4L after retiring from a 30-year career at Bank of America where she held several executive positions in the areas of credit and operational risk. In this “second act” at A4L, she uses her business acumen to lead an organization that combines two of her passions: helping children, especially those who are disabled or disadvantaged, and the arts. Chris received both her B.S. in Business Administration and her MBA from Temple University in her hometown of Philadelphia.

A resident of Virginia Beach, Chris and her husband John are the parents of two adult children. They adopted Katrina (nine months old) in May 1993 and Peter (two-and-a-half years old) in September 1993 from Russia. Katrina loves children and animals and has worked in jobs helping each. Peter works as a scenic artist for a repertory theater in Florida.

In this interview, Chris reflects on her time leading Arts for Learning, the premier arts-in-education organization in Virginia.

You’ve talked about your children having learning struggles when they were younger. How do you think the arts would have helped them?

“With hindsight we could have done more to actively engage them in the arts beyond taking them to art museums or concerts. For example, I didn’t focus on getting them piano lessons even though we have a piano because I was more worried about scheduling after-school reading enrichment lessons than playing the piano. We were so focused upon mastering the core academics. We knew all the statistics about kids not reading at grade level and what the future held for them. We were trying to do anything we could to give them a strong foundation for academic success. Greater involvement in the arts would have helped both of them with their self-esteem, confidence, and social interactions.

“It wasn’t easy for us or the children to cope with having learning differences, and so if I have the opportunity to encourage other parents who might be struggling to do the right thing for their child, I tell them I believe that giving them opportunities for active engagement with the arts is just as important as giving them a reading tutor.”

Peter eventually found his way to a career in the arts. How did that happen?

A painting Peter made for Chris that hangs in her office
Peter created this painting for Chris. It hangs in her Arts for Learning office in Norfolk.

“When Peter was in high school, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do as a career or what to study in college. He’d heard about the Conservatory at Shenandoah University, so we arranged a tour. The admission director noticed his interest in scenic lighting and design and suggested he apply for that major. So even though I knew he had excellent visual art skills and a strong interest in design and building work, I’d never thought of it as something he could do as a career and be successful. The director, in fifteen minutes, figured out something that I should have considered before.

“I think the arts and being around other artists have helped his self-esteem and his confidence in his ability to master something new or difficult. Involvement with the arts has led to him being more open with other people and expressing curiosity. He was very shy when he was younger, but now he enjoys talking with anyone about anything. The arts filled a void in him that I didn’t understand how to help him address.”

If you were to tell someone why the arts matter, what would you say?

“I think the arts is a great equalizer. It’s a universal language with tremendous social-emotional benefits. At one time I would have minimized that. Now I fully understand, having had the opportunity to watch children participate in our programs and hear stories that our staff brings back about the power of the arts to make a difference.”

When you were first hired as CEO, what did you expect? Have there been surprises?

“I had been on three nonprofit boards in the past, so I’d had exposure to governance and interacting with paid staff, but I don’t think I fully appreciated all that would be asked of me as executive director, how much of a business it really is and how you have to think of it as a business. Our mission is to inspire and engage, but there are a lot of  different things that need to be in place behind that—technology systems, finance, all of the requirements for grants. Besides the ‘aha’ of what a difference the arts can make in the lives of children in ways I didn’t fully appreciate before—any child—I think I didn’t realize how much is involved behind the scenes in terms of administrative work that needs to be done to make the arts possible.

Immediate past president Chuck Spence, CEO Chris Everly, and board member Becky Livas at a gathering in Virginia Beach.
Immediate past president Chuck Spence, CEO Chris Everly, and board member Becky Livas at a gathering in Virginia Beach.

“One thing I learned from banking that I brought to this job is an understanding that relationships are everything—how you deal with all the different stakeholders and how they all need something different from you. You have to learn what’s important to them and respond appropriately.

“I’ve enjoyed great support and encouragement from the board of directors. A lot of executive directors struggle with their relationship with the board, who you’re working for. But that’s always one thing that has gone well, and I’m grateful for their dedication to our mission.”

What has been the biggest challenge during your first five years?

Aisha Noel and Aaron Kirkpatrick set up for recording "Take 10" in spring 2020.
Aisha Noel and Aaron Kirkpatrick set up for an artist to record a “Take 10” video segment in spring 2020.

“The pandemic upended everything for everybody. It was important to keep everybody on an even keel with the belief that somehow, someway, we would figure it out. Thanks to the creativity of the staff when schools were shut down, we produced ‘Take 10’ videos, short segments by our artists for families to watch at home with their children. It was the right thing to do—it gave artists the opportunity to practice their art form when normal opportunities weren’t available to them, so it fulfilled a need.

“At the bank, I was very involved in the commercial and residential real estate market, so I went through a lot of real estate cycles. And I realized eventually it does work out, so that gave me a little bit more confidence to say, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but if we work together as a team, we’re going to figure it out.’ That’s one advantage of being older. Having the perspective that things would work out meant there was no need to panic.”

What has been your biggest achievement?

“Our greatest achievement in the past five years is the way we’ve grown and adapted to the circumstances. We didn’t always know it would turn out well, but we deliberately took some risks, after careful consideration, that proved to be the right approach. Sometimes we had Plan A and then quickly had to switch to Plan B and it was finally Plan C or D we implemented.

“I’m really proud of the staff and how everyone who has worked here, even the ones who have left, have left the organization better in some way. We’ve had the right people in place at the right time.”

Where would you like to see Arts for Learning in five years?

Chris chats with board members Rae Benn and Michael Geller.
Chris chats with board members Rae Benn and Michael Geller.

“I’d like to see us do more work outside of coastal Virginia. It would be good to figure out ways to expand our influence further outward in the state. We were getting ready to do more of that and then the pandemic hit. Now that we’re coming out of that and have built up our staff, it’s enabled us to seek out new opportunities and new relationships with other nonprofits. I think we’re focusing more on the greater community than we were able to do before and sharpening our focus upon how to best reach underserved children.

“We also want to continue to grow our board. It’s important that we have a diverse board, which I think we’ve done a pretty good job of building, but we need to look at how we continue to engage them and bring in new people as donors and volunteers.”

How have you grown as an individual in the five years you’ve served as CEO?

“I think it’s helped me be much more engaged in the larger community, raised my awareness and knowledge about social issues, and deepened my commitment to help change injustices and inequality. I’m a great believer in the importance of continuing to learn and challenging yourself through all the seasons of life. I love how this position exposes me to new ideas and a wide range of people with vastly different life experiences.

“I used to be quite reserved and shied away from asking people for money and from public speaking. But the organization is depending on me, so I’ve had to come through. I need to be the organization’s biggest cheerleader and spread the word about supporting our mission. I was actually a marketing major as an undergraduate, and that’s what I’d hoped to do. I get to do marketing all the time now, but in ways I never envisioned. Life’s come full circle.”

Chatting with A4L’s Aisha Noel

By

We’re celebrating the work anniversary of Aisha Noel, our School and Community Relationships Coordinator who started at Arts for Learning three years ago. With the pandemic creating major changes over the past two years, her job has evolved and expanded with new duties, but she still has the same positive energy and enthusiasm as when she started.

When Aisha was first hired, she primarily coordinated after-school programs while a different staff member handled bookings and programs that took place during school hours. Now Aisha schedules programs of all types, while keeping in close touch with our community partners—schools, libraries, and community centers—something that plays to her strength of being able to relate to all sorts of different people.

“My job has evolved from what I originally did, and it’s always changing. It keeps me ‘unbored,’ because I like change, but I also feel more sure of myself now,” she says, noting that she’s been able to act as a resource for newer members of the A4L program team.

When schools shut down in March 2020, it allowed Arts for Learning to diversify its program offerings by developing multimedia options, something Aisha says she’s glad we’ve been able to incorporate.

Aisha helps set up lights during the early days of A4L’s recording of artists’ programs. She’s seen here with Aaron Kirkpatrick, former artistic and education manager.

“Even though COVID has been rough with trying to reschedule programs and all of the mitigation strategies we’ve come up with, I think we’ve done a great job.”

We did it with a smile and pride. And at the end of the day, this is for the kids.”

She says there’s been another positive change from the last couple of years.

“One good thing about the pandemic—you got time to slow down and think about what you want to do. Going back to school was one of them.” In September, Aisha started remote learning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to earn three certifications in arts management: Core, Professional, and Leadership. She hopes to finish within two years.

Aisha and her mother, Angela Noel.

Giving back to her community is extremely important to Aisha. “I want to show people that you don’t have to be a statistic. I grew up with a single African American mother in downtown Newport News, and I’ve been able to travel and do different things because art has opened so many doors, and I want students to have the same doors open to them.”

I want them to be able to see themselves in the Picassos of the world. I also want them to know that the world is much bigger than 757. It’s much bigger than the 23607 zip code, and they can do anything. They say music is the universal language. I would say art in general is the universal language.”

Aisha is from a musical family where everyone sings, but she’s the only one involved in theater. When she was in middle school, she wrote and directed a play for her church, which was presented as an evening of dinner theater.

“For them to support me and cultivate my vision… I think every kid needs that support from an adult, to cultivate their love for something, to really sow a seed for a person’s future.”

Aisha is a proud alumna of Heritage High School.

 

A mentor for Aisha was Laura Gilbreath Lloyd, her drama teacher at Heritage High School in Newport News who now teaches at Christopher Newport University. Calling her a “second mom,” Aisha says Mrs. Lloyd advocated for respect for all the jobs in theater, not just for performers on stage. That approach helped spark Aisha’s interest in arts administration, which included an internship at the Signature Theatre in Arlington. She wrote the following in tribute to Mrs. Lloyd last May for Teacher Appreciation Week:

“I am forever grateful to Mrs. Laura Gilbreath Lloyd, my high school drama teacher. She nurtured my passion for performing arts and cultivated a respect for art administration. Mrs. Lloyd created a haven for her students that allowed us to express ourselves, learn valuable life lessons, and mature into healthy young adults. It was truly a pleasure to be your student then, but I count it an honor to be your friend now. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, Mrs. Lloyd!”

Performing in “It’s a Wonderful Life” with the Williamsburg Players.

Among other credits, Aisha has performed with the Williamsburg Players and in a production at the historic Attucks Theatre in Norfolk. She also completed a two-year acting program at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Washington, D.C.

Aisha and fellow acting students at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. 

Aisha says that theater is her “happy place” and that being involved in drama at school helped her overcome a disability she was ashamed of as a child–she’s completely deaf in her right ear.

“Being in theater allowed me to not be ashamed of it,” she says. “But it also helped me pronounce words better. I can’t hear words phonetically like everybody else does because of my deafness so being in theater made me practice, practice, practice those scripts so that my speech was better.”

Here at Arts for Learning, working with Aisha is a joy, something that our community partners who interact with her have discovered for themselves.

We wish Aisha a very happy third work anniversary and a fulfilling and productive year ahead in both her career at A4L and her higher education!

Always in search of adventure!

Fun facts about Aisha:

  • Favorite types of theater: Greek and commedia dell’arte.
  • Favorite role played: L’il Bit in How I Learned to Drive.
  • Favorite TV show: Criminal Minds.
  • She loves reading and just finished Michelle Obama’s Becoming, calling it “phenomenal.” “I really like seeing what inspires people to do what they do.”
  • She loves travel and adventure!
  • She and her mother are very close. Aisha calls her “my heart.”

 

A Chat with Molly Stanley, A4L’s new Learning & Community Engagement Manager

By

When Molly Stanley first saw the job listing for this new role at Arts for Learning, she grew excited. She and her husband Ethan, a lieutenant in the Navy, along with their newborn baby, were in the process of being transferred from California to Hampton Roads. As someone who had worked as an arts teacher and who had a master’s degree in arts administration, Molly found the opportunity intriguing. Plus, as a new mom, she was searching for a career with greater flexibility.

“If I wasn’t going to be teaching, I still wanted to work in education because that’s what I’m most passionate about, along with arts administration.

This position was like marrying the two things—arts administration and teaching art.”

Molly began her teaching career several years ago when she worked as an art teacher at a Title 1-designated elementary school in North Philadelphia. Although she grew up less than an hour away, it was a different world from her rural home in Blandon, Pennsylvania.

“I gained a lot of perspective and learned a ton while I was there [teaching]. It was a really hard year. I thought because I knew my craft and knew how to teach art that I could do anything, but I wasn’t aware of what trauma responses looked like in the classroom and so my classroom management definitely wasn’t good.”

From Philadelphia, Molly became an art teacher at a middle school in Maryland.

Molly helps a student at her middle schoolin Maryland
Molly helps a Vietnamese-American student translate a passage at the middle school where she worked in Maryland.

The school also was in a high poverty area, but she says she had many more “tools in her toolbox” and learned how to be a successful educator while forming close relationships with her students and her partner teacher.

During her second year of teaching, she and Ethan married.

Molly says goodbye to the preschoolers she taught in California.
Molly says goodbye to the preschoolers she taught in California.

As a military family, the two first moved for a few months to Washington state and then to southern California, where Molly taught preschool and worked on her master’s degree on-line, earning it a week before she gave birth in May to baby William. That coincided with Ethan receiving orders to come back to the east coast for what is expected to be a long-time assignment.

Molly started at Arts for Learning in September, where she’s been putting her curricular knowledge to good use, writing classroom guides for our Spread Kindness (Not Germs) video project and more programs. She has big goals for her time here.

I’m hoping to be able to put out quality content and curriculum that aligns with what teachers need, as well as what the art form is, whether it’s a music program, a dance program, a visual arts program, or some other art form.”

“I want to be able to provide a smooth transition into either a teacher being able to take that content and teach it themselves or assisting teaching artists in making that content as relevant as possible to what the kids are going to need,” she says. “Specifically, like with Spread Kindness (Not Germs), the first project I was given, I made it my goal to try and make sure it’s as user friendly as possible and that anyone could teach it.”

So far one of the most satisfying parts of Molly’s new role has been pitching the Spread Kindness project to fine arts supervisors from different school divisions and discovering how enthusiastic they are about implementing the music videos in their classrooms.

As for the hardest part?

“I’ve never not been a teacher. I’ve always been a teacher, and I know what to expect as a teacher. But it’s also been the best part because I’m learning how to function in an organization that isn’t a school. So it’s been interesting getting acclimated to the job and also at the same time it’s super exciting because there hasn’t been one part yet that I haven’t enjoyed.”

Fun Facts About Molly:

#1 Though she doesn’t have much time these days between the new baby and new job, Molly is a visual artist who typically draws using colored pencil. Architectural portraits and landscapes are favorite subjects.

#2 She’s primarily of Irish descent, and even though she comes from a “big, proud Irish family,” she’s never had the chance to visit Ireland. Her maiden name was Molly McKenna Flannery.

#3 William is her first human baby, but she and Ethan first had a fur baby named Dixie, a Labrador Retriever, who now adores baby Will and wants to be by his side constantly. Dixie looked especially pretty decked out in flowers for the couple’s wedding ceremony.

Talking with Dañetta Evans, our New Artist and Programming Manager

By

When Dañetta Evans decided to pursue the arts as a career, she says there was no “plan B”; she was committed to pursuing her passion, no matter what. She may not have been able to predict exactly where that determination would land her, but we’re happy to say it’s brought her to Arts for Learning as our new Artist and Programming Manager.

Dañetta is originally from Alabama where she earned her bachelor’s degree in public relations/marketing at Alabama State University and later received her associate of arts degree in graphic design from the Art Institute of Tennessee. She moved to Hampton Roads to attend graduate school at Norfolk State, where she first earned a Master of Art in Visual Studies and later her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies.

While at NSU, she became interested in participatory art and how data collection can aid in community development and engagement. Then, she says, she wanted to learn more about the effectiveness of STEAM (Science Tech Engineering Arts Math) education. “I created some classes to see how effective it was and did the research in how STEAM and STEM worked and how I could add something to it.”

She also was the liaison between her classmates and the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Virginia when the club wanted NSU art graduate students to create various art classes for different clubs. She loved it—“Not only did I get to do my own artwork, but I got to see the change in the students and the change in my classmates too.”

The art education part of it—it just took my heart. I saw firsthand the character development that took place in the students from the beginning of class to the end of class. I decided then—while I’ll always be a practicing visual artist, the education part was super important.”

Organizing community art events was a major part of NSU’s program. Among other projects, Dañetta helped organize pop-up shops at the NEON Festival in Norfolk, participatory art at the Hermitage Museum, and a 93-foot-long mural inspired by African American history that’s located inside Calvary Baptist Church in Virginia Beach.

At Arts for Learning, Dañetta’s role is to work with the artists on our roster to help develop innovative arts education. Creating community—as she worked to do at Norfolk State—is a major priority.

“I love to create community with our artists, when we come together, share resources, and if I can offer any sort of professional development. And also add to the roster—where do we need some extra artists to help step in?”

Those are the big goals: create community and grow the roster.”

If you’re an artist who’s interested in joining our roster, please click here for details on how to apply.

Fun Facts about Dañetta: She loves trains, especially the sounds they make. And she collect sounds. “Most of the time they’re stored on my phone so if I’m walking around and I hear something, I’ll record it. I think it started when I lived in Nashville. I walked out of a museum and the church bells were going and I thought, ‘Man, I really like that sound.’ So I just started recording it and continued to record the sounds.” And as an artist, who knows? She says “someday I’ll do something bigger with it.”