By Harold Haizlip | Corporate Consultant, After School Arts Program
The LA's BEST After School Arts Program (ASAP) was launched in 2003. Since then, more than 55,000 underserved elementary school students at 180 LA's BEST After School Enrichment Program sites across Los Angeles have successfully completed 1,300 ten-week art residencies in Visual Arts, Music, Dance and Theatre Arts taught by experienced, professional artist/teachers following the State of California's Visual and Performing Arts content guidelines. Each residency class enrolls 20 students in Grades K-2 and 20 in Grades 3-5. Artist/teachers design a special curriculum for each residency and vet these in advance of the residency with ASAP staff. Classes then meet for one hour twice weekly for 10 weeks, at the end of which students offer a special Culminating Event to demonstrate and share their new artistic skills and abilities with school faculty and staff, parents, siblings and friends. To extend and improve quality art education opportunities for all LA’s BEST students, ASAP also provides arts related field trips and staff development opportunities.
Among notable recent ASAP activities:
1) With support from a commercial enterprise, students from six different schools painted a mural depicting their their dreams for tomorrow with a personal message and self-portrait. 2) A 3rd grade ASAP student won the Go Green Expo 2010 Children’s Art Contest, was featured in The Los Angeles Times, and cut the ceremonial ribbon to signal opening of the Go Green Expo event.
2) To enable more students to participate in ASAP Dance Residencies, ASAP received a major donation from the Dizzy Feet Foundation recently founded by Nigel Lithgoe, co-creator and executive producer of the TV show "So You Think You Can Dance", along with choreographer Adam Shankman and Carrie Ann Inaba of "So You Think You Can Dance". The new foundation aims to boost dance education in the U.S.
3) ASAP students created original artistic interpretations of furniture by U.K.-born furniture designer Christopher Guy in honor Brit Week in LA. A student's rainbow rendition of Guy's wing chair won first prize.
4) The Israeli Consulate and LA's BEST joined forces to bring LA's BEST students together with students from Jewish Day Schools to launch deeper interactions among the students, create awareness of different lifestyles, holidays, traditions, and launch the concept of family between the two groups. The students created an oversized artful dove mural to celebrate their accomplishments and signify their new understandings of, and respect for, each other and their separate communities. More interactions, more individual and group art projects, and more understandings and friendshipsf to come.
Essential to the student art projects described above is the need for bus transportation. Unfortunately, as a result of a cost-saving initiative, LA's BEST lost nearly all of its transportation budget for this year. The LA's BEST After School Arts Program (ASAP) also has a significantly reduced budget for field trips and will not be able enrich student experiences in ASAP residencies though field trips to museums, theatre performances, dance concerts and other life-changing events outside their home communities. The average cost of roundtrip bus transportation for 40 students and 10 adult supervisors participating in a 3-hour field trip is $450. All donations will be welcomed with extraordinary gratitude.
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