ArtsAVL announces 11 Arts for Schools grantees

Press release from ArtsAVL:

ArtsAVL is thrilled to announce that 11 artists and arts organizations have been awarded the Arts for Schools Grant. The grant supports nonprofit arts organizations and qualified teaching artists in Buncombe County providing arts-focused performances, workshops, residencies, and field trips for K-12 students in public schools.

ArtsAVL believes that arts education is critical for academic success. Youth who receive arts education are two times as likely to graduate high school, five times less likely to drop out, and score 100 points higher on the SAT. But challenges to arts access mean that not all students can enjoy the benefits of arts education. The awarded organizations, with support from grants like Arts for Schools, ensure that students at underserved schools receive the benefits of vital arts programming.

Asheville City Schools Foundation will use grant funds to support the TAPAAS (Teaching Artists Presenting in Asheville Area Schools) Program, an arts integration program that sponsors high-quality artist residencies in Asheville Middle School, Asheville High School, the School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville (SILSA), and Asheville City elementary schools. Last year, the program served over 1000 students, and ACSF plans to expand it this year. Money will specifically go towards art supplies for teaching artists.

Asheville Creative Arts, a professional arts organization that produces, presents, and creates innovative, performance-based, visual, and multimedia works for multigenerational and multiethnic audiences. The Arts for Schools grant will support a tour of the original work SHELL, a performance about immigration and community co-created by puppeteer Edwin Salas and director Abby Felder, in Buncombe County kindergartens. The performance will be in English and Spanish.

Asheville Symphony Orchestra will help cover costs of the Music in the Schools program, which provides in-school classical performances for 2nd-4th graders in Buncombe County and Asheville City Schools. The program serves over 5,000 students in WNC each year and brings students and professional musicians together to explore classical ensembles that rotate through all orchestral sections. The program culminates in the Young People’s Concerts, where all county and city 5th graders attend a live, professional orchestra performance featuring the Asheville Symphony Orchestra.

Eric Carroll, an Asheville-based artist and educator working at the intersection of science, photography, and nature, will use funds for his workshop “Naturally Creative: Cyanotypes & Botanical Art,” which will introduce students to the cyanotype process as they work collaboratively to create a large-scale art project celebrating the natural world. Lucy S. Herring Elementary School will host Caroll’s workshop during their “Ecology Week” in October.

Visual artist, educator, and creative facilitator Ginger Huebner will lead a Create + Connect Collage/Chalk Self-Portrait workshop for 5th graders at Oakley Elementary. Huebner will share the work and story of African American collage artist Romare Bearden with students to inspire and inform their pieces. At the culmination of the project, students will exhibit their works and invite other classes to participate and learn.

Journeymen, which provides teenagers with arts programs and community groups that incorporate creative projects, music, wilderness programs, and more, will expand the reach of their free Crafting Passages program. Seventh and 8th grade middle schoolers in afterschool programs will complete hands-on building projects over the course of eight weeks across Asheville and Buncombe County Schools.

LEAF Global Arts will host three grade levels of Pisgah Elementary School students for hands-on Cultural Arts field trips to LEAF’s location in downtown Asheville’s historic “Block.” Students will rotate between Leaf Schools and Streets teaching artists (74% of whom are multicultural) sharing modalities including African drumming, songwriting, dance, theater, Easel Rider visual arts, and more.

MusicWorks, an afterschool music program at Leicester Elementary, will use grant funds to support operating costs. MusicWorks concentrates on music education as a tool for student empowerment by improving academic importance and teaching life skills. The organization prioritizes serving children from underserved youth and low-income families who might not otherwise have access to intensive music instruction and its associated benefits. MusicWorks is the only five-day afterschool program at the elementary school, which was chosen as its homebase due to its rural location and high population of underserved students.

Teaching artist Nica Rabinowitz will bring her Connecting Through Cloth program to over 150 students at Buncombe County Schools, including Hall Fletcher Elementary, Leicester Elementary, Johnston Elementary, Woodfin Elementary, and Emma Elementary. Rabinowitz will visit classrooms with a SAORI loom, created to support students with physical disabilities and no weaving experience. Students will use local sheep’s wool, alpaca, and local kudzu, raising awareness and exposing students to locally grown producers and materials and introducing them to the “farm to cloth” process.

Funds will support Odyssey Clayworks’ multilingual clay class for English as a Second Language students. This grant will make it possible to hold the class, which has been held as a summer Clay Camp with support from the Buncombe County Schools Migrant Education Program, during the year. Students work on the potter’s wheel, make sculptures, paint, and decorate their work. Costs covered include instructor compensation, materials, and firing fees.

Wortham Center for the Performing Arts will work with schools through their Arts for All Kids program, which provides access for all children to participate and learn from the arts. The program provides scholarships for students from low-income schools to participate in matinee performances and pre-show workshops that prepare students for performance experience and deepen learning related to performance. Funds from this grant specifically will support performances of DOT DOT DOT: A New Musical, with student participation from Johnston Elementary.

You can learn more about ArtsAVL’s Arts for Schools grant program here. The next funding cycle will open in summer 2024.