Newport News Public Schools Archives - Arts for Learning Virginia

“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!

New Partnership with Newport News Public Schools

May 21, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

For more than two months now, our program team and participating artists have joined together to create unique and engaging Take 10 videos for families to use while distance learning at home. We’re happy to announce we’re now partnering with Newport News Public Schools’ Family and Community Engagement Specialists (FACE). NNPS will play our Take 10 videos on their website and TV channel—that means students who don’t have reliable access to the internet will be able to enjoy our free programming.

We want to ensure all members of the community are informed about the availability of Take 10, so NNPS will be contacting families by phone and email. Newport News libraries are also offering WiFi at select meal sites, which offers another way for families to access our Take 10 virtual learning.

NNPS Family Engagement believes our programs provide a service that promotes togetherness in this time of home learning, as we all work together to create a digital social network that celebrates the power of the arts.

Click here for more information about FACE and its programs.

You can watch our Take 10 videos anytime on our YouTube channel, with music, dance, storytelling, crafts, and more to choose from.

Behind-the-Scenes of Take 10

May 19, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

At the beginning of 2020, none of us could have predicted what life would look like now in the spring. And certainly none of us at Arts for Learning could have known our Norfolk office would be turned into a makeshift video production studio.

Less than two months ago, our program team, joined by sixteen artists on the Arts for Learning roster, rallied to start creating ten-minute video segments for students learning at home, so the arts could remain part of their daily curriculum.

But there was a steep learning curve for artists and staff alike.

“It’s been a matter of working through the kinks,” as Noel puts it. From the beginning, she’s worked directly with our artists to talk through the process of creating the Take 10 videos, conversations that have taken up to two hours long and have included detailed instructions of social distancing protocols and safety measures taken before, during, and after recording. Only one of A4L’s artists had any experience producing live or recorded videos of their art. And Kirkpatrick and Noel also quickly realized they needed new equipment for better audio and video quality. The latest additions are a new directional microphone and LED lighting, made possible in part by a grant from the Community Knights Foundation.

“The quality has really expanded since the beginning of the process until now. Just watching the edited videos, it’s like, wow! Look how far we’ve come,” Kirkpatrick says. “Every session has brought with it a new lesson for me about how to approach the work.” One of Kirkpatrick’s latest projects certainly wasn’t included in his job description when he was started at A4L in January—it involved a trip to Lowe’s to buy PVC pipe and vellum paper to build a homemade light diffuser.

Noel is especially grateful to the artists who have participated in Take 10. “The fact that they have trusted us as an organization with their health is very important to me.”

“I’m just thankful for our artists’ willingness to be creative and share their art. Take 10 happened because artists said yes to trying something different.”

Kirkpatrick agrees. “We all have pent-up creativity right now. So to see an outlet be created and have artists come in and do their own thing, it’s really good vibes.”

So what’s next for our digital programming? Stay tuned, as they say in the news business. We’re working on the next phase and look forward to sharing details soon.

You can watch our Take 10 videos anytime on our YouTube channel, with music, dance, storytelling, crafts, and more to choose from.

Like what you see? We’re paying our artists to create Take 10 videos, but we don’t receive any money to produce them. Can you give $10 to Take 10? Donate here!

From Crisis to Opportunity: New Digital Programming for Arts for Learning

April 29, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

When Virginia schools were shut down in March for the rest of the school year, Arts for Learning had a dilemma—as a nonprofit that delivers its services to hundreds of schools in Virginia, how do we fulfill our mission to engage students IN and THROUGH the arts? And how do we pay artists on our roster who suddenly have no income, when we as an organization are ourselves facing a profound financial crisis?

The answer didn’t come immediately. Our program team deliberated and debated, reached out to artists and educators, and consulted with other Young Audience, Arts for Learning affiliates around the country. But amid all the uncertainty, Chief Operations Officer Anna Green says the A4L staff was certain of two things:

“The power of arts to enrich the lives of children in good times and in bad and the importance of compensating the artists who do so,” Green says. “So that’s what Take 10 became—a way to reach the students and a way to compensate the artists that enrich their lives.”

Launched on March 24, Take 10 is Arts for Learning’s new digital programming, making arts learning accessible to children and families virtually through live and recorded performances.

“I think that what excites me the most is that we have such a variety of talent,” says Aaron Kirkpatrick, A4L’s Artistic and Education Manager. “Take 10 is not a program of music. It’s not about storytelling. It’s not about visual art. It’s all of those things. So if you were to go to our on-demand list, which is growing every day, there’s a little of something for everybody, and it really speaks to the diversity of talent of everybody on the roster.”

Getting Take 10 up and running had its challenges. Although all of our artists are accustomed to performing live in front of audiences, few had experience recording on video or in teaching compact ten-minute learning segments. It was new territory, too, for Arts for Learning. Through some trial and error and a determination to figure it out, the program team dove in. Kirkpatrick made his Canon T3i videocamera available, and he and Program Relationship Coordinator Aisha Noel worked together to develop new methods for formalizing production techniques, establishing quality control and devising camera ready lesson plans, all while following social distancing protocols.

Participating artists are paid fees for time spent recording their Take 10 segments. Since A4L doesn’t have a production studio, artists record their segments at our office space in Norfolk, performing in front of a mural painted by artist Charles Williams in 1986.

Musician Tina Culver, the lead artist of the Strings Impact program and a public school teacher in Portsmouth, had to figure out how to teach the violin on video. With some help from the Pink Panther theme, she produced a Facebook Live segment that was fun to watch whether you had a violin handy or not.

“I think it’s really cool to be a part of it,” Culver says. “We’re impacting kids from a different perspective now, social media. Now we’re getting more people that are looking at it, you never know where it’s going, who it’s reaching. So I’m just glad to be a part of that. It’s just another way to reach everyone.”

The Take 10 programming is being shared widely, including by the Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Partnership for Out-of-School Time. We’ve also received requests for original digital programming from library systems and school districts in Virginia. Green sees this difficult time as an opportunity. “There’s the excitement of the possibility of being able to reach students better statewide through digital means. There’s a unique opportunity for people to see a nonprofit taking a step into a place that they’ve never been before.”

“I’m loving the #Take10 initiative and we’ll definitely be directing folks to those videos!” Christine Hurlock, Youth Services Librarian for Williamsburg Regional Library

You can watch Take 10 on Facebook Live at 2 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or you can watch recorded videos anytime on our YouTube channel.

Sign up for our newsletter so you can stay up-to-date on everything that’s happening at A4L as we work to bring new programming to your family!

Covid-19: Hard Times and Hope for Arts for Learning

April 22, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

Virginia’s stay-at-home order has changed all of our lives, in many different ways. For Arts for Learning, the impact has been profound.

For students who love our programs, there’s great disappointment. Sixth-grader Myla Stith can’t play the violin this spring because the Strings Impact program was canceled. “I was hoping I could get really good. After all these years, I wanted to show what I could do, so I’m pretty sad about it.”

The Rhythm and Me adaptive dance program was cut short for kids like Naomi Morgan, a fourth-grader with autism spectrum disorder. “She was getting the dance steps down, she was having a ball, she was having fun,” says her mother, Monica Morgan. “It was sad it ended so abruptly because she was really getting into it.”

It’s hard times for many artists on our roster too. “As a fulltime storyteller, with my backup job being substitute teaching, I’m completely out of work at this point,” says Via Goode, A4L teaching artist. Via is one of 38 teaching artists on our roster who are losing more than $42,000 in income because of program cancellations that have affected more than 16,000 students and 2,800 educators.

As a nonprofit organization, Arts for Learning is hurting. We don’t receive money from programs when schools are shut down. And that means we’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars that we need to keep our nonprofit afloat—money that we use to pay our artists and staff, our rent and electric bill, and everything else that keeps our business running.

Our artists and our staff have stepped up to create Take 10, new digital programming for home-schooling students that’s both fun and educational. It’s also a way for us to offer small amounts of pay to our participating artists. But here’s the problem—we don’t receive any money for producing Take 10. Since it brings in zero revenue to Arts for Learning, we can’t keep on doing it without new funding.

That’s why we need YOUR help. We want to keep providing arts education to Virginia’s kids, but we can’t do it alone. Any amount helps—will you give $10 to Take Ten? Use this link—all donations are tax deductible.