Update: May, 2006

Subject: KID smART update
Date: May 11, 2006
Dear Renew NOLA,

Hope things are going well with you. I wanted to send you a status report of our KID smART work this spring. Your donation from Renew NOLA Foundation has been very helpful in our effort to provide quality arts education programming.

Here's an update:

KID smART is seeing a bright silver lining beyond the gloomy cloud of Katrina. While none of the nine schools where we had programming pre-storm have reopened, we are providing artists in residency programs in seven new schools, we conduct a weekly arts project at our studio where children meet with a ceramics artist to learn about clay and make plates and other ceramic objects, and will conduct a summer arts camp for 40 low income youth ages 9 – 16 in the 7Th ward of New Orleans. Planning for our 2006-07 school year programming is also well underway.

At the beginning of this calendar year, our Board of Directors developed a strategic plan for the next 36 months. The plan is a sustainable, focused way to build relationships in schools, with artists, teachers, students, and parents. Included in the plan is a three year commitment to work with national and local psychologists to give our artists tools to address the long term needs to help children heal through the arts. We are working with Tulane University School of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry and Neurology to be a partner and local consultant in the training process as well as linking us to national consultants who have experience in trauma training. We feel this is particularly important since we work with children from the poorest neighborhoods, many of whom experienced the trauma of living in poverty prior to Katrina. Our artist training began with a workshop conducted by local arts therapist Linda Cook.

We are also working in collaboration with organizations dedicated to the transformation of our public school system.

Our artists frequently provide a written report on the activities and progress in their programs. Here is an excerpt of a report from our visual artist teaching at Ben Franklin Elementary School.

Fourth Grade: Since we’ve last spoken we have made some progress, here’s what is going on. We have just finished our letters to Picasso. The children are very proud of their writing skills and are happy to have knowledge about a famous artist. The children who wanted to participate in reading out loud did so the last class and the rest of the class voted on who should receive what place.

We are still completing our neighborhoods, and for the next few classes will be cutting and pasting them onto the background. Each of the classes’ neighborhoods has its own name and we have decided that around the edge of the neighborhood will have a poem that the class has made up about it. This poem will give the viewer a brief description of the city’s atmosphere. Each child will create one line of the poem. We will still have a judgment by the fifth grade teachers at the end of whose neighborhood was the most creative and innovative.

The next project will be called rebuilding for the future, and we will discuss what is important to New Orleans and the rebuilding efforts. We will discuss how change can be good and why everything must change. Also we will discuss how this change has impact us as citizens and will make us leaders in the future. And the next assignment will be to build what the city of New Orleans will look like five years from now. We will create New Orleans as a class will develop the city in the eyes of the future out of pipe cleaners, cardboard, and colored paper. On the cardboard will be a picture drawn of the skyline of the city by the class. And in front of it will be different scenes describing the change we will face as a city over time. I will pick a poem about a city rebuilding from a poet we’ve never discussed before, we will write him or her a letter and relate it to our rebuilding efforts. They will pick there favorite and we will post it alongside the project.

Fifth Grade: Fifth grade has just finished doing their portrait paintings of their friend and a poem to Thomas Gainsborough. We voted on first thru third place and I told them those would hang in our final exhibition, once they were typed by me. They really enjoyed the poetry competition because they got to express they’re emotions on paper in a positive way.

Thank you again for your support.

Elaine Haney
Development Director
KID smART
1920 Clio St.
New Orleans, LA 70113
(504) 410-1990
www.kidsmart.org