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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.

Rhythm and Me: An Adaptive Dance Residency

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After twelve weeks filled with growth and exploration, students in a Rhythm and Me residency in Virginia Beach shared what they learned in a special performance for family and friends, choreographing the presentation by themselves. The adaptive dance program is a partnership between Arts for Learning and Families of Autistic Children in Tidewater (FACT). The residency was designed for students to join with their peers and learn new skills in a supportive environment.

Starting in September, the students met twice a week with A4L teaching artist Angela Taylor, a certified yoga instructor. In each class, she led students in a particular dance style—ballet, hip hop, jazz, party dances and more—with each dance paired with discussion about a different life skill. The curriculum was specially formulated for middle and high school students with autism.

“We were looking at the social emotional aspects of learning, of togetherness, community, social justice, understanding each other, and being okay with who we are in our bodies,” Angela says. As the program progressed, she witnessed growth in students from week to week. One student, for example, had difficulty speaking and let her aide speak for her, but by week three, Angela saw that the girl had become confident enough to communicate by herself. “That was truly amazing to watch her grow.”

“Overall, I think that a lot of them came out of their shells and they’re just free with their dancing, free with their movements. Even some of the parents would say, ‘Oh, my child can’t do ballet.’ And I’ve always said that it’s not about the dancing. It’s about coming together and creating a community and enjoying life and having a great time. I don’t mind if the moves aren’t perfect because I’m not perfect. I just want everybody to have a good time and have a positive experience in the class, and I feel like we accomplished that.”

Parents provided overwhelmingly positive feedback about the residency. But Kara Rothman, mother to 13-year-old Jesse Elia, says she didn’t initially have high hopes for the program.

“We’ve signed up  and paid for so many things that I’ve had to drag him to, but he wants to go to [Rhythm and Me], which is the first time ever. For me, it was huge because I’ve taken him to so many different places where I have to preface who we are and his quirks, and [at Rhythm and Me] he’s allowed to be quirky. It’s okay. In other places he has to be quiet or follow directions—it’s very structured—and he was always getting kicked out of stuff. Nothing ever worked, ever. Every time I’m just so grateful that he wants to be there.”

Jesse calls the program “fun, interactive, and entertaining,” and says he especially likes being with other students on the spectrum. He also says he finds the yoga portion “calming,” and the program less stressful than others.

“If I say I don’t want to do something, it’s not like I have to do it,” he says. “But I usually like doing the stuff, and it’s fun.”

Angela says her approach as a teaching artist is to “honor each person for who they are and where they stand in this world. And I think so many people pressure children like, you have to do it, you have to do it. With Jesse, I always gave him the option. I would say, ‘Would you like to join in?’ And if he said no, we just kind of moved on because I think it’s so important to be honored by your choices.”

Jesse is an only child who is homeschooled. His mother says the socialization portion of Arts Adventures was “huge.” After his first time going to the program, Jesse told his mom he had “gone in expecting the worst, but I ended up getting the best.” As for Kara’s reaction when Jesse said that:

I cannot tell you what those simple words meant to me. Well, yes, I can. It meant the world!”

Another parent, Lori Beatty, says her 13-year-old daughter, Calli Laundre, always became excited when she heard she was going to dance class.

“When I pick her up, she’s full of energy. If we get there early, she grabs her mat and she’s just ready to go. I think the whole program is great. It’s been really good for her.”

Rhythm and Me class

The Rhythm and Me residency was the first year of a three-year Arts Adventures partnership between FACT and Arts for Learning, with funding provided by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.  The focus of the second year will be music and the third year will be visual art.

“We’re delighted to partner with FACT because the population they serve overlaps with a group of students that we prioritize reaching with our programming,” says Chris Everly, CEO of Arts for Learning. “We’re excited to be planning future collaborations.”

Behind the Scenes of the A4L Cultural Enrichment Project

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Nathan Richardson as the real Frederick Douglass
Nathan Richardson portrays abolitionist Frederick Douglass in our Norfolk studio.
Sarah Osburn Brady and Sheila Arnold record their civil rights program.
Sarah Osburn Brady and Sheila Arnold record their civil rights program.

There’s been lots of activity in our Norfolk office lately—which doubles as a production studio—as artists record special programs for our new cultural enrichment project funded by a new SHARP grant.

It’s an exciting project for a couple of reasons—it will bring quality, humanities-based arts-in-education programming to disadvantaged students in Virginia at no cost to them or their schools. And the project will provide income to artists on our roster during a time when opportunities to practice their art forms remain limited.

Sarah Osburn Brady and Sheila Arnold record their program on civil rights.
Sarah Osburn Brady and Sheila Arnold record their program on civil rights.

Molly Stanley, A4L’s Learning and Community Engagement Manager, says the programs have significant educational value, with topics that include the civil rights movement, slavery, and the Holocaust.

“Students learn about these historical events through core classes such as social studies and language arts. Through the videos we’re producing, students can deepen their learning and make connections with these topics that are relevant to their lives.”

Participating schools can choose from these videotaped programs:

  • Frederick Douglass “On Slavery and Emancipation” by Nathan Richardson: A performance that brings the true tales of Frederick Douglass to life, from his time as a slave and his escape to freedom to his rise as a great writer, orator, and abolitionist.
  • Conscience, Stories, and Hope: Hans and Sophie Scholl’s White Rose by Sarah Osburn Brady: The story of German siblings who dared to become part of the World War II resistance, no matter what the consequences.
  • Coretta: A Legacy of Love by Valerie Davis: Hailed as the “First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement,” Coretta Scott King comes to life through music and stories revealing the triumphs and tribulations of an American legend.
  • Arabiqa by Karim Nagi: An exploration of Arab culture through language, folk music, dance, and costume that bridges the east-west cultural gap.
  • Civil Rights: Finding Your Voice by Sheila Arnold and Sarah Osburn Brady: An interactive exploration of voices from the Civil Rights movement whose lessons in speaking up show us the way to effect social change today.

The programs are designed for either elementary or middle school students and include age-appropriate teacher guides for easy and effective classroom implementation. The videos are set to debut in February. Photography and editing is provided by Rob Holmes.

Photographer Rob Holmes videotapes Sarah Osburn Brady's program.
Photographer Rob Holmes shoots Sarah Osburn Brady’s program.

Thanks to our participating artists and to the funders of this grant–Virginia Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The funding is part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) and the NEH Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) initiative.

Rhythm and Me: Teaching with an Open Heart

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In guiding the Rhythm and Me adaptive dance residency for students with autism, teaching artist Angela Taylor leads with an open heart and many years of specialized training.

In the program, Angela helps middle and high school students explore themes that include communication, teamwork, and self-worth through a variety of dance and body movements—all in an environment where they’re learning alongside their peers. Rhythm and Me is the first residency under the three-year Arts Adventures program, an A4L partnership with Families of Autistic Children of Tidewater (FACT) that is underwritten by a grant from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. During the twelve-week residency, students meet for classes two evenings a week in Virginia Beach.

Angela has been an Arts for Learning teaching artist since 2015. She’s a certified yoga teacher, with hundreds of hours of formal instruction who uses a trauma-informed approach in all of her classes. Angela has special training in working with children who have physical, mental, and emotional disabilities.

One mom shared that her 13-year-old son, Jesse, had been incredibly anxious going to the program for the first time, saying she can’t even remember how many events, clubs, camps, and workshops he’s signed up for have “backfired on us” in the past. But that’s not what happened this time:

“When we came to pick him up, I was preparing myself for what has become the norm for us. Some type of issue – either from him or from the program. But the first thing we noticed is that he was still participating – like really participating. That alone made my heart smile – though I knew better to ask him how things went and the zillion other questions I always want to know. So, here is the most amazing part of all. I didn’t even need to ask because this is what my son told me as soon as we were in the car”:

I liked it. It was fun. Honestly, I went in expecting the worst, but I got the best.” Jesse, age 13

As for Angela, she says that she’s “so grateful for the opportunity to share, learn, and grow with these amazing young artists.”

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

Read more about Angela here. To inquire about booking her to come to your school or community center, please call School and Community Relationships Coordinator Aisha Noel at 757-961-3737 or email Programs@Arts4LearningVA.org. The Rhythm and Me dance residency can be adapted to all abilities and ages of children and teens, from kindergarten through twelfth grade.