Lakeview School Painters of the Month
Hi everyone. Painter of the Month has missed a few months, but we're back. We've been, as you'll see, busy.
A.R.T. had a major breakthrough, thanks to our dynamic co-chair of the A.R.T. board of trustees: Barbara Vaughn Hoimes. BV linked A.R.T. to an amazing individual, who wishes to remain anonymous, but also wanted to free A.R.T. to start new programs all over the country, and that is what we've been doing. Ten select and lucky organizations are going to receive A.R.T.'s breakthrough at little or no cost. This has accelerated our ability to spend less time begging and much more time reaching the kids and adults A.R.T. could help liberate from the untenable passivity they endure.
Thanks to Principal Lynn Sikorski, A.R.T. is now running a program at the Lakeview School in Edison, NJ. It's a sunny place full of kids. It took us a long time to get in there, and we couldn't have done it without a select group of parents, teachers and the truly unruly lobbying of Lakeview students Dani and Lee, two kids who are also part of our Princeton University Saturday program. It was hilarious. In the A.R.T. music program, Dani wrote a song: 'A.R.T. is cool at my school.' With all this good fighting to gain us entry, the old powers that be were moved aside, and in we came, and it's going great. Lynn Sikorski is a truly exceptional principal. She knows all of the tons of kids in her school, in a rich way, knowing all about them, caring so much about each of them, and working hard all the time to get them the power and freedom they need.
One of the spunky Lakeview painters played our Tracker Rosalind Engle a little tune on his Dynavox. 'You Have a Friend in Me,' the lyrics sang to Roz. When Roz asked, "Was that for me?" the young lad gave her a nod, switched the saved tunes to that old pop song, 'Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting,' accompanying this with some good little karate moves. After this he signaled the next music would be for his painting session. Music to paint by. Phantom of the Opera! Moody and passionate -- the dramatic colors began to fly.
We started a new program with Seven Hills at Groton, Massachusetts, thanks to John Orr and Eisai Research Institute of Boston, then went on to Williams College where we trained staff from the Mount Graylock School and Community Access to the Arts (CATA), located in Great Barrington, Mass. CATA brought us up with a grant they won from the National Endowment for the Arts. Pretty cool. Then it was on to the Amelia Island Care Center in Florida. We started a really great program at Manasota ARC near Sarasota. Back north to South Jersey to raise a program for Bancroft NeuroHealth and the Voorhees Pediatric Center. We had a successful pilot program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and hope to integrate it on an on-going basis. Next we did a start-up at the Barber National Institute in Erie, PA. We worked with some of the best staff ever up there, and the artists rocked the house big-time. The Barber National Institute is a huge operation and they are among the most enlightened groups we have ever worked with. They 'get it.'
New sites locked in the A.R.T. pipeline of all-out action are as follows: at the end of October we work with the ARC of San Diego, then hop over to Coronado Island to address the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leadership Conference. November is the Bronx, with AHRC NYC. Then a new program in Manhattan with the NYC Department of Education: 23rd Street and 2nd Avenue. Manhattan is going to be a most serious launching pad for us.
As the months grow colder, we somehow managed to place the three new Florida programs we are going to help start. December is P-ARC in St. Petersburg. January is the ARC of Putnam County, and February is UCP South Florida in Miami. We have been looking to work with UCP (United Cerebral Palsy) for quite a while, and this looks like a wonderful place to start.
We'll update you on major media coverage, which will include a good feature in American Profiles Magazine which reaches a readership of ten million. We are pleased and proud to have won funding from both the New York Community Trust and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Dorothy Lichtenstein is underwriting our program in Manhattan.
We've been told our remarkable progress makes us appear to be flush with cashola, but this is not true. We're still only four people, our office in my basement. |
