Logo
  • HOME
  • ABOUT US
    • Our History
    • Annual Report
    • Strategic Plan
    • Meet the A4L Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEA)
    • YA National Network
    • Employment
  • PROGRAMS
    • Arts + Learning Exploration
    • Arts + Learning Snacks
    • Schedule a Program
    • Virtual Arts Experiences
    • Find A Program
    • Find An Artist
    • Summer Camps
    • Professional Development for Artists
  • SUPPORT
    • Our Donors
    • Individual Giving
    • Give Back Through Rewards
  • GET INVOLVED
    • Advisory Groups
      • Artistic Advisory Group
      • Education Advisory Group
    • Become an A4L Artist
    • Become a Board Member
    • Internships
    • Program Observer
    • Volunteer
  • Our Stories
  • Virtual Arts
  • Contact Us

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

July 11, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

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.

Filed Under: COVID-19, Grants, News, Press Releases, Program Spotlight, Uncategorized Tagged With: afterschool programs, Arts Ed, arts education, dance, grant, pandemic

In Memory of Marty Einhorn

February 19, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

Martin (Marty) A. Einhorn passed away Thursday night after contracting COVID-19 while battling cancer. Marty was a founding member of Norfolk CPA firm Wall, Einhorn & Chernitzer and a passionate community and arts advocate. After becoming involved with Young Audiences in the mid-1980s, Marty first served as president of the Board of Directors in the early 1990s and was re-elected in 2011. Marty received our Volunteer of the Year award twice, sharing with us his time, financial resources, creativity, and leadership skills. Marty Einhorn and his wife SusanWe extend our heartfelt sympathies to Marty’s wife Susan, sons Willy and Jay (April), granddaughter Charlotte, parents Barry and Lois, and sister Wendy (Ron).

 Arts for Learning’s CEO, Chris Everly, shared these thoughts about Marty and the impact he had on so many: 

It was a Young Audiences performance when he was a student that inspired Marty to start playing the trumpet and his lifelong love of jazz. His life was a living testimony to the force that can be unleashed through exposure to the arts. He was a passionate supporter for our organization and many other arts and community organizations, especially if they worked to help people marginalized by society.

 Marty used to say he wanted to get a tattoo of Miles Davis on his forearm for his sixtieth birthday and instead he got cancer. He eventually got his wish–a tattoo of a trumpet with Miles Davis’s signature below it–before his second battle with cancer. 

 If Marty saw a need, he immediately got to work on a solution and had the gift of getting to others to join him. He had an enormous and diverse network of friends. People were drawn to Marty because of his positive attitude and genuine concern for the well–being of others. When Marty asked, “How are you?”, he meant it.

Mart at Arts for Learning's 65th anniversary party in September 2019

It is difficult to express the enormity of loss all of us at Arts for Learning feel because of the huge influence he had upon our organization and upon all of us as individuals.  In tribute to Marty, I hope we can always remember the difference our work can make to a child and see challenges as opportunities rather than obstacles.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: board of directors, Marty Einhorn, volunteer

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on InstagramFollow Us on YouTubeFollow Us on Twitter
Phone: 757-466-7555

Signature Sponsor:

Copyright © 2023 · Young Audiences | Arts For Learning | Virginia

×