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

On behalf of everyone here at Arts For All, we’d like to wish you all a happy holiday season! 

Throughout this year, Arts For All (AFA) has crossed many milestones and continues to expand, due to the success of our programs. It is because of your support that we’ve been able to grow as an organization and achieve our goals; so from the bottom of our hearts, we here at Arts For All would like to say thank you. Looking back at our eventful year, we would like to share with you some of our most memorable projects, bringing as many of our programs to children in under-served communities throughout New York City as possible. 

This year with our most popular program, Literacy Through The Arts, we’ve had students from PS15, PS163, and Hamilton Heights Elementary demonstrate a wide variety of growth developing skills in reading, writing, and verbal expression through our arts integration curriculum. Some examples include Kindergarten working on rhyme recognition through song and poetry, Grade 1 learning about story creation and using puppets to tell stories, and Grade 2 creating original adaptations of La Princesa and the Pea. We are also thrilled to have added a 4th school to this program in 2019, PS76 in Queens!

With our Artistic Residency Program, one of our main programs in which professional artists teach visual arts, dance, theater, music, poetry, and film workshops to youth – some highlights include our students at Renaissance Charter School learning how to use textiles, provided by Fil Doux Textile, as frames for pictures of New York City landmarks in a Visual Arts class. At PS163, by adding drama and movement to our existing Haiku program, our students worked through body awareness exercises to an eventual culmination of a prepared in-school festival based around the student’s work.

Through our Video Creation Project, students from one of our partners, the Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC), created several short videos including a cooking tutorial and a video about what happiness mean to ICC residents and staff. During this same time at an after school residency at Williamsburg High School of Arts & Technology (WHSAT), students made a trailer to their own movie about adventure, friendship, and learning about yourself.

And finally from our Creative Works Program, students from New Alternatives for Children (NAC) were able to prepare a showcase of their work, which included glimpses of collaborative warm-ups made by the students, two original dances, and two original shows about stage fright and the true story of “rock, paper, scissors.”

Lastly, we want to thank YOU, for being the backbone of our organization and for believing in our vision for a better future for our students. As we currently serve approximately 3,000 in-need children every year through our free, accessible arts programming, we’re constantly reminded of all the time, energy, support, and resources that go into making Arts For All function. It is because of our dedicated staff, teaching artists, volunteers, donors, partnering organizations, and individuals such as yourself, that all of our work is possible.

This holiday season, please consider making a donation, so that we can continue to provide and sustain quality arts programs to under-served children in New York City for years to come.

Warm Regards,

Anna Roberts Ostroff, Executive Director