George Stevens Academy
Written by Carol Trimble, Maine Alliance for Arts Education Executive Director and member of the planning committee for the IIC’s
One of the many fascinating things about the Imagination Intensive Community Site Visits is how different our day is at each site. We visited George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill on the first day of its annual week-long, all-school Arts Festival Week. The celebration (organized by art teacher Katie Greene for the past 30 years!) includes nearly 100 workshops in all arts disciplines from poetry to detailing a car, from weaving on an outdoor loom to hip hop, from jug band to filmmaking, from stand-up comedy to papercrete! And that’s not all—the Festival also includes performances and the annual creation of the “lawn forest,” where students work all week to wrap large branches in colorful strips of cloth and “plant” them on the front lawn of the school.
Our site visit also included several gatherings at the Blue Hill Inn with dozens of representatives of community organizations who help to provide rich offerings for students in the Blue Hill area: Haystack, Kneisel Hall, the Blue Hill Library, WERU radio, New Surry Theater, Bagaduce Music Lending Library…to name just a few.
Clearly, this is a community that recognizes the importance of the arts, where residents regularly participate in the arts, and where extraordinary arts experiences are provided for its students. One student said to me, “Our entire community is open and encouraging us to try things. Arts are not seen as an extra, but as something that should be there!”
What a joyous day we spent in Blue Hill!
The project is being conducted by the Maine Alliance for Arts Education and the Maine Department of Education. The project is supported in part by a grant from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Betterment Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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