By Steven Blodgett
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2005
As with many such success stories, it began with a need and an idea.
In the 1990s, public schools in California were struggling to maintain educational
offerings in the fine and performing arts. School funding was tight and arts
instruction was in jeopardy, especially at the elementary level and at lower-income
schools
.
Then dean of the School of the Arts at the University California, Irvine,
Jill Beck, introduced the idea of a university-–K-12 collaboration
in arts education that would provide hands-on experiences in the arts to
school-age
children by placing university students in classrooms as instructors and
mentors.
Beck envisioned an arts education outreach program that, if adopted throughout
the University of California system, would help alleviate the burden on the
public schools and ensure the ongoing presence of arts instruction in the classroom.
“The arts are critical,” says Beck, “especially at a young
age…Not
only do appreciation for and mastery of the arts have intrinsic value on
their own, but mounting evidence suggests that exposure to the arts contributes
to
learning overall through the development of skills in creative thinking,
problem-solving, and teamwork. Those skills have direct application in math,
science, and other
academic subjects.”
From modest beginnings, ArtsBridge was born. Starting with a limited pilot
program involving seven University of California, Irvine students in 1996,
the program evolved under Beck’s stewardship into a nationwide
network called ArtsBridge America involving 22 universities in 13 states
and Northern Ireland.
Funded through foundation and corporate grants, as well as by the universities
involved, ArtsBridge provides stipends to university students who participate
in projects in the local schools. These ArtsBridge scholars, as they are
called, work closely with teachers in designing projects that will complement
or
enhance the curriculum.
In January 2005, Lawrence University joined ArtsBridge America and became
the first private institution to sponsor ArtsBridge activities. Thirteen
students
were selected as Lawrence’s first group of scholars — nearly all
of whom are pursuing majors or minors in music education, performance, studio
art, or theatre — and began teaching in the schools during Winter
Term.
Throughout the winter and spring, the scholars engaged in nine different
projects involving more than 300 Fox Valley students, from kindergarteners
to high school
seniors.
Leah Sinn, ’05, Bloomington, Ind., and Clare Raccuglia, ’07, Northfield,
Ill., lent their musical and studio-art talents, respectively, to the African-American
Quilt Project, involving nearly 100 second- and third-graders at four elementary
schools that introduced the students to African-American history, jazz music,
art, textiles, and quilt making. Students engaged in crafting sections of a
quilt and creating a 12-bar blues song. The sections made by each class were
then combined to create a collaborative quilt that was displayed in conjunction
with the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum’s exhibition of “Bold Improvisation:
120 Years of African-American Quilt.” The ArtsBridge scholars and
their pupils participated in a field trip to the museum to see the broader
exhibit
and their own contribution.
At
Clovis Grove Elementary School in Menasha, students in Chris Otto’s
fourth-grade class were involved in an unusual approach to studying life
in the Caribbean. ArtsBridge Scholar Lukas Abrahamson, ’05, Appleton
(pictured, right), led the students in an exploration of the culture and
traditions of Trinidad and
the region through the lens of music. They learned about the history of
steel drum music and the popularity of steel drum bands, produced their
own play,
and spent a great deal of time learning how to play the tamboo bamboo (tamboo,
from the French tambour or drum), which they performed with in the Memorial
Chapel at the inauguration weekend ArtsBridge Day celebration.
Under the tutelage of Alison Vandenberg, ’05, an English major and theatre
minor from Sheybogan (pictured, below left), high school students at
the Appleton Area School District’s
Renaissance School for the Arts engaged in the ArtsBridge project “Bringing
History to Life on the Stage.” The students, in grades 10 through
12, conducted research into life in America in the 1920s, 1930s, and
1940s. Based
on their research, the students wrote three original one-act plays, which
they then performed for 8th-grade American history students from Wilson
and Roosevelt
middle schools.
“One
of my students found a quote from Emma Goldman that stated all human
beings have a right to freedom, self-expression, and radiant beauty,” Vandenberg
says. “They took that and ran with it, using it as
an organizing theme for the plays they produced — one on freedom, one
on self-expression, and one on beauty. The freedom team crafted
a play that spanned three decades and looked at differences in generational
experiences, beliefs, and values within one family.”
Elementary-school students at Appleton’s Odyssey charter school
and high school students at the Renaissance School participated in an
ongoing
ArtsBridge
project called Picturing Peace. The brainchild of education professor
Robert Beck, Picturing Peace grew out of an experimental program begun
at the
University of California, Irvine. With the support of a U.S. Department
of Education
Preparing Teachers to Use Technology grant, Beck set out to study how
photography could
be used to develop visual intelligence and critical appreciation of images
among young children. In its second year, with the help of ArtsBridge
America, Citizen Peacebuilders, and Professor John Cummins of the University
of
Ulster, the project expanded to involve fourth-grade classes in Belfast,
Northern
Ireland, thereby developing a cross-cultural component.
The
next stage in Picturing Peace’s evolution was its introduction
in the Appleton schools in early 2005. Asked to visualize concepts
such as friendship,
tolerance, and harmony, the students produced photographs of their various
understandings of peace. With the help of former poet laureate of Wisconsin
Ellen Kort, they also composed poems to accompany their images that explained
and elaborated on the meanings depicted in their photographs.
The students’ artwork was presented as a traveling
exhibit, first at the newly opened Paper Discovery Center in Appleton
and then, throughout May, as a display on the Lawrence campus. Odyssey
fifth-grader
Damon
Dickinson visualized peace in the form of a flickering candle flame, “lighting
up the world” and “traveling around the globe,” while sixth-grader
Beth Clarke photographed several of her classmates with their hands overlapping
and clasped together. In her accompanying poem, Clarke wrote, “if your
hands are the same as mine, why isn’t there peace?”
Through the auspices of President Beck as founder and director, Lawrence
University is now the new national headquarters of ArtsBridge America.
Plans are also
underway to increase the number of Lawrence students participating locally
in ArtsBridge projects.
“
ArtsBridge opens so many doors, for the students, their teachers, and
the Lawrence scholars who participate,” says ArtsBridge scholar Vandenberg. “Host
teachers benefit from the fresh ideas the ArtsBridge scholars bring,
the students have the opportunity to engage in a type of learning experience
never offered
them before, and the scholars are able to integrate what they themselves
have learned with teaching in a real classroom setting.”
“It’s amazing to see what the schoolchildren can do,” adds
Vandenberg. The same could be said of the first group of Lawrence ArtsBridge
scholars.