Arts Education Partnership Grants Announces Awards
Greene County Council on the Arts (GCCA), in partnership with Questar III, is pleased to announce the following Arts Education grant awards for the 2012-2013 school year. Made possible with funding from the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts and corporate sponsors Stewart Shops Holiday Match and Wal*Mart, these awards are administered by GCCA for Columbia, Greene, and Schoharie Counties. Fundable programs reflect a true planning and fiscal partnership between artists/arts organizations and local schools. Awards support creative, in depth, arts-based projects for K-12 public school students and include three or more contact sessions with the same core group of students. Requests also frequently reflect cross-disciplinary collaborations between classroom teachers and performance, music, literary, folk and/or visual artists.
In Columbia County, the following awards were approved:
Taconic Hills High School PTO & Shakespeare & Company – $2000 for program to produce a Fall Festival of Shakespeare Twelfth Night. Students will experience open rehearsals, reflection and evaluation, break down the actions and motivation of characters, and conduct plot analysis. Exploring the language and passion of this tour de force, 9-12th graders will research, memorize lines, participate in stage design, costuming and promotional aspects of the performance.
Germantown PTSA & Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company - $2884 for Germantown High School grades 9 – 12 to work with the Company in developing The Things We Carry, a project inspired by Tim O’Brien’s masterwork of contemporary literature about the Vietnam War. Using O’Brien’s work as a platform, students will create writing, visual art, music and songs based on the (emotional, physical, spiritual) things they carry in their own lives. Student work will be translated into dance, shared at the process stage, and culminate in an April performance.
John Farrell & Montgomery Smith School in Hudson – $2684 in support of Many Different Languages, a music and songwriting project for grade 3 classes with Farrell and students from the American International School of Budapest, Hungary. Together, the students will exchange letters, create and interpret lyrics, contribute artwork, and participate in making a music video.
In Greene County, the following were approved.
Sandra Dutton & Catskill Elementary School - $425 for The Cinnamon Hen, an art and language arts program for grade 2 with award winning author/illustrator Dutton. Students will discover how a picture book is developed, how ideas grow, how drawings and ideas are revised. Students will also write and illustrate their own Cinnamon Hen adventure.
Coxsackie-Athens Foundation for Education & Julie Kabat - $1447 for Literacy to Life, a dance, music, and theater program for EJ Arthur Elementary grade 1 students. Literacy to Life is a descriptive writing project which features creative movement, music and theatre games to help students illustrate their ideas with actions and to eventually translate these ideas into written word.
In Schoharie County, the following were awarded.
Middleburgh Public Library & Suzanne Bloom - $2009 for The Art of the Book- Illustrating Adventures, an ELA and visual arts program in which Middleburgh Middle School grade 7 students will turn personal experience into picture stories with the art of hand crafting books.
Middleburgh High School & Kim & Reggie Harris - $1559 for Honoring the Emancipation music and US history program for grades 9-12. Honoring will provide insight into African American history and culture, the impact of racial bigotry and Jim Crow laws. Selected songs will explore the topics of freedom, justice, peace and love of country.
Arts Education Partnership award recommendations were determined by a combined Greene, Columbia, andSchoharie Countyreview panel with experience applicable to the task. Awards were made in accordance with NYSCA guidelines. For information on any of the awarded programs, or to discuss a potential artist/school partnership for the 2013-14 school year, visit our website or contact Director of Community Arts and Arts Education Grants, Colette Lemmon at 518-943-3400/ Colettegcca@hotmail.com.
