100 year old woman
Jay Leno had Dorothy Custer as a guest on The Tonight Show. Very funny and healthy Dorothy is 100-years-old and played Turkey in the Straw on her harmonica. She taught 7th graders the harmonica for several years. She is from Idaho and named Pioneer of the Year.
Grant opportunity
Contact for media queries: Victoria Hutter, hutterv@arts.gov, 202-682-5692
Contact for application inquiries: Design Staff, OT@arts.gov
On October 11, 2012, the NEA will post guidelines and application materials for Our Town, the agency’s primary creative placemaking grants program. Pending availability of funding, grants will range from $25,000 to $200,000.
Our Town will invest in creative and innovative projects in which communities, together with their arts and design organizations and artists, seek to:
Other key information:
Projects may include arts engagement, cultural planning, and design activities. Definitions of these activities can be found in the FY 2012 Our Town grant announcement. Project examples are below.
Now in its third year, Our Town has provided $11.57 million to fund 131 projects in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Those projects are diverse in geographic distribution, number and types of partnerships, artistic discipline, and type of project. As regards population size, in FY 2012 alone, 41 of the 80 grants supported projects in communities with populations under 50,000.
To view a map of these projects along with descriptions and images, visit the Our Town section of the NEA website.
Art Engagement Project Examples
Union County Arts Center in Rahway, NJ Grant: $75,000
Union County Arts Center, the City of Rahway’s Redevelopment Agency, Arts Guild New Jersey, LuceGroup, Rahway Arts District, and artistic and community partners will collaborate on RAHWAY ARTsPART, a series of creative performances and community engagement activities.
RedLine in Denver, CO Grant: $25,000
The arts collective RedLine, City of Denver, and seven additional organizations will collaborate on A Village Environment, a project within the city’s Sustainability Park that involves the creation of public sculptures that will produce renewable energy. The public sculptures will be commissioned via a competitive selection process, with the requirement of artistic excellence and the ability to generate power.
Cultural Planning Project Examples
City of Omaha in Omaha, NE Grant: $100,000
The City of Omaha is partnering with Love’s Jazz and Art Center and local organizations on the Street of Dreams project, part of the revitalization plans for North Omaha’s 24th and Lake Street District. The grant will support a feasibility and community design study to re-imagine Festival Square and will allow the partners to engage visual artist and urban planner Theaster Gates to transform a nearby vacant building into a central space for artists and residents.
Santo Domingo Tribe in Santo Domingo Pueblo, NM Grant: $100,000
The Santo Domingo Planning Department and Housing Authority, Enterprise Community Partners, together with five local partners, will work together on a cultural district plan for Santo Domingo Pueblo. The plan will document the cultural heritage of the Santo Domingo Tribe, establishing livable and culturally appropriate guidelines for historic adobe structures and new development.
Design Activities Project Examples
Native Village of Mary’s Igloo in Teller, AK Grant: $50,000
The Native Village of Mary’s Igloo, a federally recognized tribe, is partnering with the not-for-profit Kawerak, Inc. and the Cold Climate Housing Research Center on community engagement and design activities for the Mary’s Igloo Community Development Center. The center will be designed through three design charrette meetings with the community and with local artists. The proposed facility will include a museum, cultural heritage room, library, commercial teaching kitchen, artisan workshop, small business operation spaces, lodging for tourists, gift shop, and storage.
Austin Film Society in Austin, TX Grant: $75,000
In 2000, the City of Austin collaborated with Austin Film Society to form Austin Studios on 20 acres at the newly decommissioned municipal airport. With the Our Town grant, the partners plan to incorporate a decommissioned National Guard Building into the Austin Studios campus. The remodeled building will include affordable space for film production and education, a new exhibition and visitors center, two screening rooms, and a plaza and lobby for public events.
An invitation from the board chair, Elizabeth Watson
Hello,
Please join me this Sunday at 5:30 – 7:00pm at Slates Restaurant in Hallowell (163 Water Street) for a fundraising reception to welcome Peter Alexander as the new executive director of the Maine Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE).
Julie Richard, the new director of the Maine Arts Commission, will be our keynote speaker, and co-sponsors for the event include the Maine Music Educators Association and the Maine Art Education Association. So if you have an interest in arts education in Maine, this event is the place to be! But space is limited, so please RSVP to info@maineartsed.org.
Even if you are unable to attend, please consider making a contribution to help jumpstart MAAE’s new strategic plan. Under Peter Alexander’s leadership we are about to undertake new programs to help boost awareness, appreciation, and investment in arts education in all Maine communities, and we need your financial support. You can make a tax-deductible contribution by visiting MAAE’s new website at http://www.maineartsed.org or by going directly to our donation page here. If you prefer to donate by check, please send it to Maine Alliance for Arts Education at P.O. Box 872, Augusta, ME 04332-0872
Also, if you have not done so already, please take a moment to update your information in our database. You can do this by clicking on the “update your profile” link at the bottom of this message.
I look forward to seeing you on Sunday!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Watson
Board Chair
Maine Alliance for Arts Education
If you’ve never heard of Caine’s Arcade, it’s a cardboard arcade a nine-year-old boy (named Caine) built in his father’s East LA auto parts shop. The imagination, perseverance, strong work ethic and optimism Caine shows is truly amazing.
If you have 10 minutes, you really should check out his site and the short film that goes along with it. I promise that you won’t be disappointed!
Looking for student arts stories
If you are a regular meartsed reader you followed the 20 posts from January through June called Another Arts Teacher’s Story. The series will continue later on in this school year. Along with telling teacher’s stories this year, student’s stories will be shared as well.
I invite arts educators to identify a student who has an arts story to tell. Arts educators have helped me create a set of questions for students to answer. The students can be middle, high school or graduates. If you have a student who is passionate about the arts, who has benefited from arts instruction, who is proud of their accomplishments in dance, music, theatre and/or visual arts, their story should be shared.
Please email me at argy.nestor@maine.gov and let me know what age the student is and I’d be glad to send you the questions to pass on to a student. I know there are many many students whose story should be shared. I look forward to hearing from you!
MAEA member opportunities
EDUCATOR EXHIBITS
One of the benefits of being a member of the Maine Art Education Association (MAEA) is that the professional organization offers opportunities to exhibit artwork for teachers and for students. During October MAEA partnered with Maine College of Art (MECA) for an exhibit at MECA that was fantastic. MAEA member and art teacher from Brunswick High School Allison Price is the present coordinator for the member art exhibits and is dedicated to offering outstanding exhibit opportunities. Allison worked with Jane Dalton and Kelly McConnell from MECA to arrange for the recent show and I understand, will again next fall. There are two more exhibit opportunities planned for teachers this calendar year in other venues. If you are a member of MAEA you invited to participate. Please contact Allison for the details. If you are not a member you might want to consider joining by contacting the MAEA membership chair Constance Panetski.
Retired art teacher from Westbrook and MAEA member Lynne Shulman at MECA with her sculpture
STUDENT EXHIBIT
Art teachers are invited to submit one piece of artwork from their school for the Maine Art Education Association (MAEA) and Maine Education Association (MEA) student art exhibit annual event.
Teachers who are both MEA and MAEA members may submit one piece of student artwork to celebrate Youth Art Month. This work of art will be framed by the MEA and will hang in the Maine Education Association office in Augusta. The frames are great and the reception is very nice. Many teachers, MEA employees and other visitors who go to the MEA office really enjoy viewing the student artwork. This is a great way to highlight the work that students do in art and the work art teachers do.
If interested:
NAME TAG
Please secure the following information to the backside of the artwork.
MEDIA RELEASE FORM
Please include this information with the artwork.
I give the Maine Art Education Association permission to print my child’s artwork and name (first and last) in both printed and electronic newsletters.
I give the Maine Art Education Association permission to publish my child’s artwork and name (first and last) on a student art website called Artsonia.
I give the Maine Art Education Association permission to print my child’s artwork and name (first and last) for the postcard invitation for the student art opening.
Student’s Name:_____________________________________________________
School:____________________________________________________________
Teacher’s Name:_____________________________________________________
Parent’s Signature:___________________________________________________
Executive Director in place at MAAE
Recently I met with Gail Scott who served as the Interim Director of Maine Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE) and Peter Alexander the new Executive Director of MAAE. I was encouraged to converse with Peter about his ideas and possible directions for the future of MAAE. He kindly answered questions for the readers of the meartsed blog. Below is the interview which will hopefully provide for you information on the future of MAAE.
Please tell the meartsed readers a little bit about your background.
My background in the arts is quite rich and varied, especially in music. I started piano lessons at 4, became a choirboy at the Washington National Cathedral at 8, began classical guitar lessons at 10 and by 18 had started a professional rock band. I spent all my childhood summers on an island off Cundys Harbor with no electricity, plumbing, phones or cars, and there developed an abiding love of nature and the coast of Maine that has influenced all my artistic undertakings, from watercolors, photography, and writing to my music. I currently serve as the president of the Maine Songwriters Association (mainesongwriters.com) and devote as much time as I can to my own career as a musician (peteralexander.us). I’m really looking forward to meeting new colleagues at the reception and fundraiser that the MAAE board has organized for October 21 at Slate’s Restaurant in Hallowell (info at maineartsed.org).
What brings you to the MAAE Executive Directors job?
My new role with MAAE is about as perfect a match as I could imagine for my education, skills and experience: I hold a masters degree from Antioch University with a focus on non-profit advocacy and organizing, and I love taking on big challenges. MAAE offers plenty of opportunities for both organizational development and creative programs that can build on its long and successful history to serve the needs of Maine’s arts education community.
What skills and background experiences have you had that will be assets in your role at MAAE?
The primary role played by every non-profit director is fundraising, and I’m pretty fearless about asking people and organizations to join me in supporting causes that I believe in. But just as important is the role of collaborator and facilitator, and my long background in both board and staff roles in a variety of non-profit organizations should be helpful. Another skillset that is found in every successful organization is the ability to balance strategic thinking (planning) with tactical applications (programs) and continuous evaluation and improvement. As a lifelong entrepreneur in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors I have managed to develop some capacity for this kind of multi-leveled approach to management.
Tell the readers a little about the strategic plan that the MAAE board has created just prior to you coming to the position.
Prior to my arrival MAAE’s board conducted a thorough review of programs and decided to sharpen the organization’s focus into two main areas: advocacy and professional development for arts educators. How this plays out with actual programs is still up in the air, and I am excited to be working with my new colleagues at the Department of Education, the Maine Arts Commission and other arts education organizations to identify the most pressing areas of need where MAAE can serve the community. One thing that seems to be percolating to the top is the need for training and resources for arts educators and advocates that can better convey the value of arts education to local decision-makers and stakeholders—especially in communities and school districts where the role of arts education lags far behind traditional science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and athletic programs.
How do you imagine working with the arts education community in Maine?
I love working with people collaboratively, where everyone’s talents and abilities are put to good use and where people have fun together, enjoy each others’ company, and value each others’ contributions. Although I have a deep history in the arts, I am new to arts education, so I am looking forward to learning a great deal; and I hope that—with my “outsider’s perspective” and newcomer’s enthusiasm—I am able to contribute something that my colleagues find useful.
If MAAE were given $500,000 to do whatever you please, what would it be?
Since I am so new to the organization and to the arts education community in Maine this question lures me into saying something I might later regret! But I’ll take the bait. I would dedicate a portion of it to hiring development staff to help ensure that MAAE’s financial future is secure; and I would use some of it to design and conduct research and develop a communications campaign (with resources and tools for arts educators) to firmly establish public opinion and awareness in every community about the essential value of arts education for Maine’s economy and our quality of life. I would use the rest to organize an all-expenses-paid annual celebration for arts educators of all disciplines, where they could step back from the daily grind, enjoy each others’ company, learn new skills, and develop new collaborative, cross-disciplinary relationships and programs.
Thank you to Peter for taking the time to share your thoughts with the meartsed readers. Please join MAAE next Sunday, October 21st, 5:30 to 7:00 PM at Slate’s in Hallowell for a reception welcoming Peter.
How do they do this?
Kaleidoscopes were very popular when I was younger. It is pretty amazing to see how technology plays a part in this one. You can just look at this or you can move your cursor over the screen slowly and watch what happens.
Thanks to Kal Elmore for forwarding this link: http://inoyan.narod.ru/kaleidoskop.swf
Research study of your dreams
Those of us who engage in arts education often find the lined blurred between our careers as arts teachers and our avocation.
I really enjoyed working with Dennie Palmer Wolf during the statewide arts education census work that the Maine Alliance for Arts Education and the Maine Department of Education conducted during 2008. Dennie helped us launch our Imagination Intensive Community (IIC) work as a follow-up to the census. The IIC was recognized and received a National Best Practice Award from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.
Dennie, whose primary focus is presently with Wolf Brown, is an innovative thinker and her piece called Living an Engaged Imaginative Life is thought provoking. It is re-printed below with her permission. Thanks Dennie!
If a genie rose in a stream of twisted blue smoke and offered me, free of charge, an all expenses paid research study of my dreams, I would know immediately what to say. It would be a longitudinal study of three groups of young people in ordinary neighborhoods: those who become engaged with the arts, those who engage with science and technology, and others who are not particularly engaged. My army of co-researchers and I would track how these activities affect every aspect of these individuals’ lives. We would harness the growing powers of social media, asking young people to text us whenever they were engaged in their art form. A programmer of stunning insight and ability would work side by side with a gifted graphic designer to produce displays that showed a day, a month, or year in their lives. We would have the equivalent of topographical maps of what their artistic projects connected them to: real places, people, websites, books, movies, and performances. We would have the equivalent of MRIs of their imaginations. After early adulthood, we would visit them at regular intervals (like Michael Apted’s documentary Seven Up). We could look at their work, leisure, civic engagement, volunteering, and what they passed on to children or the people they mentored. In the end, we would have one way to answer, for one time and place, to two questions that preoccupy me: “What differences does living an engaged imaginative life make?” and “What differences does engagement in the arts make to the way we live our lives?”
What would you want to learn more about if you were given an all expenses paid research study of my dreams? I’d love to hear your ideas!
Another longtime benefit to music
Carol Trimble
In my family we’ve been talking a lot lately about the topic of hearing because my 92 year-old dad has been trying to make the decision about whether or not it’s worth the investment to him to get new, upgraded hearing aids. (He said, “If I spend all that money, I sure am going to be mad if I die.”) We’ve talked especially about the real possibility that, even with new hearing aids, he may still have great difficulty hearing in situations like restaurants where there’s a lot of background noise in addition to (and jumbled in with) the conversation around the table. So I was fascinated to read the recent New York Times article “Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits” by Perri Klass, M.D., showing that yet another benefit of early music education is to improve hearing in exactly that kind of situation.
Klass reports that, “In a study of those who do keep playing, published this summer, researchers found that as musicians age, they experience the same decline in peripheral hearing, the functioning of the nerves in their ears, as nonmusicians. But older musicians preserve the brain functions, the central auditory processing skills that can help you understand speech against the background of a noisy environment.
‘We often refer to the ‘cocktail party’ problem — or imagine going to a restaurant where a lot of people are talking,” said Dr. Claude Alain, assistant director of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and one of the authors of the study. “The older adults who are musically trained perform better on speech in noise tests — it involves the brain rather than the peripheral hearing system.’
It encourages me to know that the Maine students who are currently in strong early music education programs may not have to struggle with the kind of hearing problem that has been so difficult for my dad, who did not have the opportunity to benefit from such programs when he was a child.
But, of course, that’s not the only thing that encourages me about Maine students who are participating in strong music education! As Alexandra Perbery-Clark, a doctoral candidate researching these issues, is quoted as saying in the article:
“We want music to be recognized for what it can be in a person’s life, not necessarily, ‘Oh, we want you to have better cognitive skills, so we’re going to put you in music,’ ” Ms. Parbery-Clark said. “Music is great, music is fantastic, music is social — let them enjoy it for what it really is.”
It’s yet another reminder to us all that an investment in music education is always worth it, in so many ways!
See the full NYT article at
Thank you to Carol Trimble for contributing this blog post about this interesting research. Carol is the former executive director of the Maine Alliance for Arts Education and is enjoying teaching as an adjunct instructor for UMA on the Ellsworth and Bangor campuses. She can be reached at carol.trimble@maine.edu.
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