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The Tucson Pima Arts Council believes the arts are vital to a comprehensive education for all children and fosters lifelong learning in diverse arts and cultural expressions and traditions. The Arts Council encourages creativity and active dialogue, helping the residents of Tucson and Pima County find expression and meaning.
Special resources for:
TPAC Delivers Arts in Education Programming
Through Several Conduits:
Community Arts Development Program
The Community Arts Development Program provides opportunities for active participation and enjoyment of arts and culture through Artist Residencies in school and after-school, exhibits, rural project grants, and workshops. The program also provides support to neighborhoods and communities and provides technical assistance to help them meet their unique needs throughout the year.
Teaching Artists Roster
The Community Arts Development Program in conjunction with the Arts Council's Neighborhood Initiatives developed this Teaching Artists Roster in order to provide an opportunity for artists to market their residency programs to schools, organizations, and the general public. The roster also serves as a resource for schools, organizations & individuals interested in learning more about artist residencies and seeking to hire artists.
For local educators, teaching artists, and kids looking to learn through artistic activities, the roster is the first of what will soon be a collection of easy, accessible resources for connecting youth with art experiences. The site will provide teachers with simple ideas of how to include art in their lesson plans; artists with opportunities in schools and community groups; and kids with current art opportunities, such as contests, scholarships, and classes.
Tucson's River of Words
Each year, Pima County Natural Resources Parks and Recreation partners with the Tucson Pima Arts Council to conduct this free poetry and art contest for the kids of Pima County on the theme of watersheds. The contest is designed to help kids explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live, and to express, through poetry and art, what they discover. The Tucson's River of Words contest is open to all children in Pima County, from 5-19 years of age. The natural world as seen through the eyes of its children is heartening, humbling, fresh, often life-affirming, and sometimes disturbing.
Rural-for-the-Arts Delivery Program (Artist Residencies)
Guidelines for Successful Residencies NEW!
The Rural-for-the-Arts Delivery Program delivers arts performances and residencies of one day to four weeks to rural schools and communities. Paper and book making, storytelling, dance and choreography, poetry writing, tile mosaic murals, mask making, and printmaking are brought to approximately 10 rural schools and communities a year.
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Funhouse Movement Theater: In its 4th year in residence at Sahuarita Intermediate School working with 3rd grade classes, this program has grown in both size and scope, reaching six classes this year. Last year, Continental School was added to the program, adding another 4 classes. This year, Sopori School in Amado was added. The residencies consisted of a lecture demonstration, 9 dance sessions, a performance by the students for their peers and parents, and attendance at the Funhouse Movement Spring concert matinee. Approximately 1,000 students, parents, teachers, and administrators benefited from this program. The program becomes a part of the culture of the school. At Sahaurita, for instance, the second graders all know that "next year" they will get to be in the dance residency. The schools value the program as a tool to enhance students' social, emotional, and academic growth.
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Your teaching and coaching efforts helped our students understand how they can move and be in their world. Their imaginations flourished as you challenged them to think and create various dance movements. - Dr. Wayne Ross, Principal, Sahuarita Intermediate School
Funhouse Movement Theater Residency
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- Paul Fisher at Chaparral Middle School: Paul Fisher, led 224 youth through an odyssey of language and theater. Teachers noted in their evaluations that students who were at first, "very resistant" to the early part of the program began quickly to open up and share their feelings. "They became much more outgoing and appeared happier," one teacher noted. She also noted that the classes Paul worked with invariably showed academic improvement, going from 41% to 82% passing on the semester final.
Youth Scholarships
Now in its ninth year, the Pima County Youth Arts Award is a program designed to identify, recognize and encourage talented high school seniors within Pima County who demonstrate excellence in Dance, Music, Theater, Visual Arts, Media Arts, or Literary Arts. Recipients win scholarships to Pima Community College towards an Associates Degree in the Arts. This unique collaboration between Pima Community College and the Tucson Pima Arts Council and others has provided dozens of young people with the means to begin their college educations.
Grants Program Youth Components
The Grants Program provides support for the youth and educational programming of our local arts and social service agencies, by artists, and in neighborhoods throughout the community. Approximately 60% of the over 70 grantee organizations that receive grant funding from the city through the Arts Council and 50% of the rural project grants awarded include youth and arts educational components in their programming.
Examples of Grantee Education Programs:
- VSA Arts of Arizona Artist/Teacher & Student Training Program, providing hands-on teacher and student training consistent with the Arizona Arts Standards in a variety of media.
- Arizona Media Arts Center Festival-in-the-Schools, providing Tucson and Pima County youth the unique opportunity to interact with visiting filmmakers in a film festival environment.
- ArtsReach Native American Student Writing Program, an intensive model project providing a series of creative writing workshops, teacher trainings, and in-services to students from the Yoeme/Yaqui communities of Barrio Libre and Old Pascua and their educators.
Public Art Youth Components
The Arts Council administers Percent for Art programs for both the City of Tucson and Pima County. It organizes the artist selection process and oversees the production and installation of original design and hand-crafted artwork in city and county public facilities, transportation projects, neighborhood centers and parks. Since 1986 over 100 public art projects have been completed or are in progress in Metropolitan Tucson and Pima County. Many of these include community and neighborhood input and youth components in the planning, production and installation of artwork.
Neighborhood Initiatives
The Arts Council offers support for programming that encourages neighborhoods to celebrate the diverse populations and rich, multi-cultural heritages of the people they live next door to. These projects may be designed for the betterment of a neighborhood and/or community, and to contribute to greater awareness of the diversity within a community. Successful projects in the past have included neighborhood historical studies, youth/elder collaborations, community meetings to discuss possible stories and imagery, workshops for hands-on design and production of artwork, exhibitions and dedication ceremonies. These projects have strengthened our neighborhoods, and increased cultural understanding among many of Tucson 's residents, young and old.
Family Arts Festival
The Tucson Pima Arts Council's Family Arts Festival is an annual, free event that celebrates the rich cultural heritage of our southern Arizona communities. It provides interactive, multicultural and multidisciplinary arts experiences for youth; encourages families to use the arts as an educational tool; showcases a diversity of artists in an accessible setting in the heart of downtown Tucson for the benefit of educators, youth and their families; and provides information about youth programming in the arts, and health and human service agencies.
ArtNet
ArtNet is a coalition of Tucson’s arts and cultural organizations, educational institutions, and individual arts educators whose mission is to integrate art experiences into the community with a focus on our youth. The Tucson Pima Arts Council is a member of ArtNet, and we encourage you to be, too. Read more about ArtNet and see their list of members on our Things for Educators page.
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