hewlett

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Program: education Component: Improving Instruction Name: Arbor Heights PTSA EIN: Street address: 3701 SW 104th City: Seattle State: WA Zip: 98146 Country: USA Main Phone: 425-497-6423 Fax: 206-252-9251 Web Address: http://ahptsa.blogspot.com/ Head of Oranization: Joe Sharp Title: President PTSA Primary Contact: Name: Franklin Hu Title: Grant Writer Street Address: 8632 39th Ave SW City: Seattle State: WA Zip 98136 Country: USA Phone Number:425-497-6423 Fax Contact email: frankhu-nospam@compuserve.com

Organizations work: The Arbor Heights PTSA is a group of volunteers working to promote quality education, expand the arts and fill in the gaps left by budget cuts. Everything we attempt to accomplish is designed to improve the educational experience for all students.

Summary of problem and work proposed: Teachers have difficulty in presenting arts beyond their abilities. They are restricted to the usual simple crayon, glue and paper activities. This doesn’t lead to very interesting art projects or truly inspiring artistic creations. To go beyond this, we propose to bring in an Artist-in-Residence from the community who will work with each of the classes from K-5 for several weeks to produce sophisticated artworks relating to the media and skills of the artist involved.

How does this problem fit with the program's goals and priorities: The problem of presenting the arts in a dynamic and sophisticated fashion is met by the program’s goal of allowing children to directly interact with a real-live working artist. By showing children what true artists are capable of, this inspires them to stretch their own abilities and produce surprisingly creative works of art.

How does the proposed work address the problem: The proposed work directly addresses the problem of introducing art to children by giving them opportunities to have a role-model. Otherwise, a child may never have an opportunity to interact with a full-time working artist. It allows the class to go well beyond the limited abilities of any particular teacher and allows an in depth exposure to the media and techniques of the Artist-in-Residence. It also inspires kids to push the limits of their creative abilities – to go beyond textbook activities and truly create works of art that you wouldn’t think that elementary students would be capable of. These kinds of children/artist interactions can have a profound effect on how children view arts in education and can serve as a base for future learning.

What is the work's expected budget: The projects primary cost is paying for an artist to come in full-time for a period of several weeks. The artists are usually selected from a list of teaching artists who have been pre-screened to provide this type of service by the Washington State Arts Commission. We currently anticipate the cost of doing this at $5,500.00. Additional supplies for the projects will be $500.

Amount Requested: $6,000.00 per year for 1 year

Grant submitted electronically 10/24/06