Art Programs For 5,000 In-Need New York Children

Here at Arts For All we are wishing everyone a wonderful Labor Day! We are also getting excited about the start of the school year! Students return to NYC public schools on Thursday September 5, which means Arts For All programs will be getting underway soon after.

For those who are newer to our organization I want to take this time to introduce Arts For All’s 4 primary branches of programming. For those who have been supporters of ours for a long time, we are grateful for all you have done to help maintain these programs over the years.

Our first program to kick off this school year later in September will be our Literacy Through the Arts Program.   Our goal for the Literacy Through the Arts program is to raise and improve students’ reading, writing and verbal expression skills through a multi-arts curriculum in theater, literature, music, visual arts and dance. Through art, K-2 students develop critical and creative thinking and a vocabulary to express ideas, stories and emotions. Literacy Through the Arts (LTA) builds literacy skills through the arts, in- line with schools' academic curriculum in grades K-2 at PS15, PS163, & Hamilton Heights School. LTA fosters literacy, language development & personal development, & provides students the opportunity for creative self-expression. Classes meet 1/week for a class period (45-55 minutes), 11-13 weeks in the Fall & 15-17 weeks in the Spring.

Arts For All is also excited to for our Artistic Residency Program to start up at schools in all 5 boroughs. Through our Artistic Residency Program, AFA’s professional artists teach music, theater, dance, visual art, poetry and film workshops to under-served children. AFA partners with public schools and community organizations lacking funding for arts programming. We work with the needs of our partnering organizations to provide arts programs for the length of time, age groups and artistic disciplines they request. Each school receives multiple 6-10 week residencies, consisting of weekly arts workshops; totaling approximately 130 workshops & directly serving an estimated amount of 500 students in a given year through the Artistic Residency Program. AFA works with school staff to determine the most appropriate grades for workshops & the arts disciplines that will best serve students and AFA Teaching Artists design workshops to support each school's curriculum for the grade level selected.

Through the Artistic Exposure Program, Arts For All offers special extra-curricular opportunities for our students, such as our Day at the Met field trip to the Metropolitan Museum. The trip serves to expose youth to the classics, inviting the children and teens to fully explore all that theMetropolitan Museum has to offer. The children who attend our last A Day at the Met included students from our various partnered schools and students from New Alternatives for Children, a center for disabled children and children from PS163, an extremely low income elementary school in the Bronx.

The annual Audience Program is one of our four programs in which AFA brings professional theater productions to under-served kids in the NYC area where students, parents and their communities are able to experience professional theater productions for free. In the past, the Audience Project shows have toured around AFA partner schools and sites with productions such as Voice Power!, Pinocchio!, Pig Pen Theatre’sThe Mountain Song and The Magician’s Assistant. This past year for our Audience Project AFA presented The Magician’s Assistant, written and performed by New York based actress Mélissa Smith. The Magician’s Assistant is a fun, interactive children’s show that teaches children the power of believing in yourself, asking for help, and eating your vegetables. We were fortunate to be able present this production at two locations, The Tank, a theatrical performing arts space, as well as Barnes and Noble. For these productions AFA invites our partner youth organizations to come to the performances as a field trip opportunity.

We are excited to embark on this new school year, providing unique artistic experiences for students all over New York City! Through these programs we will continue to focus on Arts For All’s core values through the arts, building self-confidence, self-expression, teamwork, resilience and creativity in children!

Thank you for your continued support!