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“Snacks” Bring Smiles

June 12, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

Everybody loves snacks…and our Arts + Learning Snacks are no exception. Look at the big smiles on these kids’ faces as they received their free art activity kits. We handed out 250 snack kits to children who attended the “One City Wake Up and Read Summer Kick-Off” this month in Newport News. And word has it that at Virginia Beach Public Libraries, they’re flying off the shelves  because “everybody loves them.”  

Who wouldn’t love an engaging, hands-on art activity?

Seven-year-old Everly can’t wait to dig into this delicious art snack!

Find out more about our Learning Snacks by clicking here!

Filed Under: ArtsEd, News Tagged With: 757 arts, art activity kits, art enrichment, arts integration, comics, mini-comic, Newport News Public Schools, Root Beer Comics, Virginia Beach Public Libraries

Arts + Learning Snacks: Meals for the Mind

May 6, 2021 By Cindy Sherwood

Take art supplies, mix them with heaping portions of creativity, and serve them to elementary-aged kids hungry for a break from screen time—that’s our winning recipe for Arts + Learning Snacks, which are now being delivered to area elementary schools. These art activity kits have the right ingredients for kids to use their hands and minds to make an art project by themselves or with their caregivers.

Five Norfolk public elementary schools have received the first batch of Learning Snacks, which feature instructions in English and Spanish on how to create a mini-comic. A4L’s comic artist Matt Harrison designed the curriculum, which includes supplies and calls for students to invent characters, plots, and settings as they write and draw their own comic adventures.

A number of artists and board members have stepped up to help assemble the snacks, following all COVID-19 safety precautions.

A4L board member La-Neka Brown helped assemble the snacks at our Norfolk office.
Rainbow Puppets’ Wesley Huff and David Messick were hard at work putting together the snack bags.

Storyteller Via Goode and board member Diane Gibson had the honor of delivering the first snacks to five Norfolk elementary schools: Jacox, James Monroe, Lindenwood, Tidewater Park, and Richard Bowling.

Another Learning Snack, the “Zen of ‘Za,” will be distributed soon. The snack is custom designed for students with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), tying movement of the body with lines in art; activities include students stretching to “make a pizza” and creating a decorative “pizza” out of the art materials supplied. A4L dancer Jae P Renee is creating supplemental videos with visual instructions for students. Two hundred of these snacks are headed to the Portsmouth Autism Resource Team (PART) for distribution. The Zen of ‘Za will also be provided to a number of schools for use by kids in kindergarten through third grade who don’t have an ASD diagnosis.

The two current Learning Snacks—with a new one now being developed—will be distributed for free to more students via additional elementary schools in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia Beach Public Libraries, the Newport News FACE office, and community sites in Portsmouth.

There’s a little added bonus for Norfolk’s PB Young Elementary School from the Snacks’ initiative. Thanks to Office Depot’s “Give Back to Schools” program, the school has received $115 in rewards from the money we’ve spent to purchase supplies for the kits.

The snack kits give under-resourced students a break from screen time and the challenge of a hands-on arts project that aligns with Virginia’s fine arts and literacy Standards of Learning. Would you like to help bring more Learning Snacks to children in economically disadvantaged areas of Hampton Roads? Click here to donate.

Do you want to learn how you can bring Learning Snacks to your school, library, or community center? Start by clicking here for more info!

We’re grateful to our partners who are underwriting the cost of these “meals for the mind”—thanks to Aldi Smart Kids, the E.C. Wareheim Foundation, the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, the Portsmouth Service League, and the Virginia Beach Arts and Humanities Commission for their major support of this new initiative.

 

 

 

Filed Under: ArtsEd, ArtsED for Exceptional Students, News Tagged With: art activity kits, art kits, arts education, arts integration, autism spectrum disorder, Covid-19, hands-on learning, learning snacks, mini-comic, Norfolk Public Schools, Portsmouth Public Schools, Rainbow Puppets, Root Beer Comics, screen time, Via Goode, Virginia Beach Public Libraries

Artist Spotlight: Karim Nagi and “Arabiqa”

December 31, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

With all the challenges Arts for Learning has faced in the past year, there’s one very positive side effect—thanks to virtual programming, our roster has expanded to include vibrant and culturally diverse artists who live in other parts of the United States. We’re especially excited about Chicago-based artist Karim Nagi joining our team. Karim is an Arab musician, dancer, and folklorist whose program “Arabiqa” is now available for booking.

As a native of Egypt, Karim immigrated to the United States when he was eleven years old, along with his mother and father. The family settled in Boston, where Karim attended public school and where few students knew much about his home country, culture, or Muslim religion. Karim eventually became a professional performing artist. Since 1999, he has led the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble, a group dedicated to preserving and presenting traditional Arabic vocal and instrumental music.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a school invited Karim to make a presentation about Arab culture to students who “only had the frightening impressions from the news.” With close to 500 presentations since that time, he’s refined his performance into a dynamic and informational exploration of Arabic culture. The program blends music, dance, language, and traditional costumes. Karim demonstrates the traditional percussion and string instruments he plays and shows different dance styles he learned growing up in Egypt, as well as folk dances from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, and other Arab countries.

In addition to exposing students to new art forms, Karim has a more personal motive for his performances.

“If everyone relies on the news or some type of media portal to get their information about another person, they’re only going to have stereotypes and simplistic renderings and one-sided reports. When people are learning about other cultures, it’s very important that they interact with people from those cultures,” Karim says. “I believe it’s important that they learn about my culture specifically because it’s so central in news and world politics, but I’m more interested in the process of people becoming tolerant and receptive of diversity so I think it’s important for them to interact with actual people from each segment of society.”

In the twenty years he’s been performing in schools and performing and leading workshops for adults, Karim has seen a positive shift in perception.

“People are more aware that the arts have a role in sharing culture and creating dialogue between people. I think before people thought of the arts as just entertainment. But these days people really give it the credit that it deserves.”

When schools shut down across the country last spring, Karim had an advantage over many performing artists because he was already experienced working with video and audio. With his virtual presentations, he adjusts to the needs of an individual school, with both live and recorded performances available. But whatever the format of his performances, he’s committed to make them interactive.

“I still need to engage with each student behind the screen and make them feel that they need to participate. That’s the important thing, rather than just performing in a block for forty-five minutes and students having to watch. This is true in real-life, in-person performances as well. With digital, I have to make sure I still keep it engaging and in a way that students participate.”

So how does Karim know that he’s making a difference through his school presentations? Earlier in his career, the words of a student from Virginia made a big impression.

One of the fourth graders came up to me and said they wanted to be Arab when they grew up. This fueled me a lot. I’m helping people become less afraid of something that’s foreign or something that’s perceived as anti-American by some people. I was expressing my culture and a young child saw it as something that they would like to emulate. Even if they didn’t understand the difference between ethnicity and career at the time, it still meant that they weren’t afraid of it, that they could relate to it.”

Interested in Karim doing a virtual presentation at your school, library, or community center? Contact Aisha Noel at 757-961-3737 or email us at programs@Arts4LearningVA.org for more information. We may have funding available to help offset the cost of Karim’s performance!

Filed Under: Artist Spotlight Tagged With: 757 arts, 757 nonprofit, Arabic culture, arts integration, arts programs, arts-in-education, digital programming, folklore, Karim Nagi, performing artist, virtual learning

Thank You, Hampton Roads Community Foundation

September 10, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

Some organizations do so much for the community that it’s hard to overstate their impact. The Hampton Roads Community Foundation is one such organization. Through its COVID-19 relief grants, the foundation has extended a lifeline to many area nonprofits that are struggling financially because of effects from the pandemic.

We are delighted to report that the Foundation has awarded us $15,000 under its special grant to provide COVID-related relief to arts organizations. We pledge to use the money wisely, as we build our programming of virtual arts experiences to meet students wherever and however they’re being schooled. Thank you to the Foundation for its support.

The Hampton Roads Community Foundation is southeastern Virginia’s largest grant and scholarship provider. Since its founding in 1950, the regional community foundation has provided more than $301 million in grants and scholarships to improve life in southeastern Virginia.

Filed Under: COVID-19, Grants, News, Virtual Learning Tagged With: 757 arts, 757 nonprofit, Arts Ed, arts education, arts integration, arts-in-education, Covid-19, creative learning, digital learning, Hampton Roads Community Foundation, virtual learning

#TBT Rhythm and Me: An Adaptive Dance Residency

September 3, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

As Virginia public school students get ready to head back to school next week, many will once again be experiencing virtual learning. We take a moment to look back on this Throwback Thursday to a time last winter before Virginia schools shut down and our artists worked with students in-person.

#TBT

Sometimes a single moment can illustrate the power of an Arts for Learning program.

That was the case at Rhythm and Me, an adaptive dance residency that connects students living with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Students from throughout Portsmouth Public Schools are transported to Simonsdale Elementary School twice a week to learn the basics of dance and movement, with a focus on key health concerns associated with ASD, including non-verbal communication.

A4L teaching artists Jasmine Marshall and Natasha Leshanski have been working with a group of students since early February. Natasha, who leads the yoga portion of the program, says it’s the “very opposite” of typical classroom learning, where students are expected to be self-contained as they lean over desks and aren’t free to move around. In Rhythm and Me, students exercise, stretch out, and open their bodies, Natasha says it’s also “helping them feel less vulnerable about opening up emotionally by literally using their whole body.” That process may be more challenging for students living with ASD who can feel uncomfortable with certain types of movement or with touching or being touched.

In the early weeks of the program, Natasha had been encouraging students to create more independent yoga poses, but it wasn’t quite working. She introduced the concept of partner poses, including one called “lizard on a rock,” with the person on the bottom kneeling in a child’s pose and the person on the top leaning back and extending their arms to the ground.

Teaching artists work with a second-grader in the Rhythm & Me dance residency.A second-grader named Seth was fascinated. Natasha says he’s often not interested in certain activities and will choose to run laps around the classroom instead. This time, though, was different. With Jasmine stretched out in the child’s pose, Seth climbed on her back as the “lizard” and Natasha supported him as he balanced himself. He then tried out the post with other students, connecting with them in a brand new way.

“It was the first time Seth had relinquished control over his body, so when he was laying across his classmate’s back, he even was able to draw his arms up and get that full stretch. When you think about it, that’s probably the most vulnerable position you can be in,” Natasha says. “He let himself go all the way in a classroom full with people he doesn’t know very well, and so I felt like it was really a breakthrough with his comfort level with all of that.”

The goal of Rhythm and Me, Natasha says, isn’t the perfect downward dog or the precise execution of  partner poses.

“We want the kids to feel confident, we want them to be moving their bodies, and we want them to enjoy themselves. So everything else takes a back seat to those. As long as they’re willing to put themselves out there, it’s success, day after day.”

We are grateful to the Portsmouth General Hospital Foundation, the Portsmouth Service League, the Helen G. Gifford Foundation, the Business Consortium for Arts Support, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts for their funding of the Rhythm and Me dance residency.

We look forward to serving students both virtually and, when safe, in person, and we wish all students and educators a successful start to the school year. If you’d like information about our special arts experiences created for virtual learning, please click here.

 

Filed Under: Artist Spotlight, ArtsEd, ArtsED for Exceptional Students, COVID-19, Throwback Thursday Tagged With: Arts Ed, arts integration, autism spectrum disorder, back to school, dance, teaching artists

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Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive
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Norfolk, Virginia 23502
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Main Office

Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive
Suite 239
Norfolk, Virginia 23502
Phone: 757-466-7555
Fax: 757-455-9859

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Arts for Learning Style)

No, we’re not talking about this year’s Best Picture winner (although we DID love it!) We’re talking about springtime at Arts for Learning where we have so much going on—new residencies, workshops, public performances, and more for students from Pre-K to 12th grade! Residencies Strings Impact: Fourth through sixth graders at three elementary schools in […]

Join the A4L Mailing List!

Sign up to receive the latest news on arts integration from Arts for Learning! Thank you for supporting arts-in-education.

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By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Arts for Learning, http://www.arts4learningva.org. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

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