Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, Nov. 1, 2006

November 1, 2006 at 2:05 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

Next meeting: Monday, November 6th, @ 1:40 p.m. in the Music room.

Portland Stage Company has a well-defined education program in place and we should take advantage of it. CBHS already is.

We need to meet with CBHS about a variety of things:

• summer camp ideas
• sharing resources for field trips/workshops
• curriculum planning (comprehensive HS ideas around math/literacy)

[Val: luckily, Phil and I are both in the CBHS-PATHS Liaison Group]

We started listing items that should appear on our timeline. See the full notes for details.

Frannie Peabody Center is looking for musicians, dancers, and artists for their AIDS vigil on November 30th at the First Parish Church.

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Lisa Hicks
• Elizabeth Watson
• Dave Nichols
• Valerie Green
• Phil Divinsky

Full Notes (paraphrased):

We started with a report of the meeting Vicky, Lisa and Elizabeth had with 2 people from the Portland Stage Company. They met with Anita Stewart (Artistic Director) and Bess Welden (Intern Coordinator).

P.S.C. is surprised that we haven’t connected with them already, since they have a well-developed education program. In addition to their performances for schoolchildren, they offer workshops in the classroom. Typically a 2-hour workshop would cost $400, and P.S.C. would pay half of that, so the school would only pay $200. This could be a great resource for us. It’s an attention-getter and is already a well-structured program.

P.S.C. also has an intern program for college graduates. There’s a possible connection there, maybe a mentoring situation.

P.S.C. is already linked with CBHS–CBHS is sending a busload of students over to see a play, and they already have a P.S.C. workshop scheduled at CBHS. We should talk about this stuff in the PATHS-CBHS Liaison meeting. Can we coordinate with CBHS to share busses, etc?

We should definitely take advantage of P.S.C.’s education program, since they’ve been in a big push for more community involvement.

Also, we have a few contacts at USM (one is Trudie Wilson, who was on the old Advisory Board for the Arts Academy). We should reconnect. Deer Tree Theater (in Harrison) was suggested by Dave as another possible connection.

Vicky mentioned that the great thing about something like Haystack is the intensive nature of it. We can’t string together a bunch of intensive experieces and call it a curriculum, but it would be great to periodically have a project that everyone works on intensively together.

A brief discussion ensued about summer programs at PATHS, such as the existing Art Camp for elementary-age students. Could we have something for middle schoolers that would be separate, and more oriented around PATHS classes?

We started to write down some items for our timeline:

• Fundraisers
• CBHS meetings about:
  • summer camp ideas
  • portland stage
  • field trips (sharing resources)
  • comprehensive hs ideas (math and literacy curricula)
• PATHSFest
• Student & parent awareness presentation about Arts Academy
• Ad campaign
• Logo
• Student “orientation” and survey
• Themed exposition for PATHSFest (led by Lisa DiFranza?)
• Literacy added to curriculum
• Community connections
• School board connection

Phil brought in the easel sheets from the Visioning Night, and we agreed that it was very useful to hang them up so we could all see them and talk about them in the context of timeline planning.

The "student orientation and survey" item caused some conversation about how that would work, and what it would be for, and how would we share students, and does that mean that we send students away from our classes? Or do we teach curricula in a different way instead? [Val: I'm trying to convey the heightened level of energy/panic in the room... ;-P]

The exercise will be a good way to gather data about what students are interested in (and possibly expose some curriculum connections we hadn’t considered). Phil brought us back to the timeline task by reminding us that once we figure out where the "orientation and survey" exercise fits on the timeline, we can have a bigger discussion about how to do it. We’re still far, far away from drawing any conclusions about how that will shape the way we teach.

At the end of the meeting, Vicky received a phone call from the Frannie Peabody Center, asking whether we have students who would like to participate in an AIDS vigil at First Parish Church on November 30th. They’re looking for music, dance, and possibly art exhibitions.