Newark Arts Announces Art Start Winners

Last night in front of a packed room in Express Newark, Newark Arts' executive director, Jeremy Johnson announced the winners of their 2017-2018 Art Start Grants. Begun in 2001, the Art Start program stimulates cultural activity throughout the city, especially activities that involve young people and take place in our neighborhoods. Since its inception, the Newark Arts Council has made over 150 grant awards through the ArtStart Grants Program ranging from $500 – $3,000 and totaling over $400,000!

Here are the 2017 Winners:

• South Street School
  Recognizing that our students need opportunities that would allow self-expression through varied creative outlets, we at South Street School would like to provide students in grades five through seven with that opportunity in the form of an after-school graphic design program. Our program would immerse our students in valuable hands-on learning experiences that will ultimately transform them into becoming authentic innovators that may one day change the world of tomorrow.
   
• Thirteenth Avenue School
  Thirteenth Avenue School would like to diversify art education for our students by collaborating with the Newark School of the Arts to offer our students tap dance instruction. The proposed project will expose students to professional dance and offer an alternative form of engagement outside of the standard school classroom
   
• Ironbound Community Corp
  We are writing to request funding to launch a one-week intensive summer drum camp in July 2017 affiliated with the Keys 2 Success music program. This camp is designed to build off the success of the Keys 2 Success weekly 45-minute in school ensemble percussion training session that has been conducted throughout the spring of 2017 in South Street School in the Ironbound section of Newark.
   
• Rafael Hernandez School of Performing Arts
  Rafael Hernandez School aims to partner with the Metropolitan Opera Guild in a year-long opera program for our 5th grade students and teachers. As a result of the partnership, over 120 students across four 5th grade homerooms will create and perform their own class operas based on stories, poetry, or historical events from literacy class. This project integrates theater with the goal of engaging students and families while building confidence, collaboration, and creativity.
   
• Institute of Music for Children
  The Newark Multimedia and Performing Arts (MPA) Residency Program features deep collaborations with Institute teaching artists and Newark school's administration leaders and classroom educators. The program aims to develop students’ comprehension and appreciation of the arts, technology, and music; encourage school work that is empowering, uplifting, and positive; create a strong sense of community in the classroom; and enrich and enhance the school’s current arts programming through technology and collaboration of new artists and educators.
   
• Sharron Miller's Academy for Performing Arts, Inc.
  During the 2017-18 school year, Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts (SMAPA) will continue its successful in-school dance residency partnership at Newark’s Quitman Street Community School, benefiting an estimated 370 K-8th grade students through 19 weekly dance classes conducted by skilled teaching artists (28-week program, culminating with two year-end performances). SMAPA’s innovative curriculum features creative movement (K/1st grade), tap (2nd/3rd grades), West African (4th grade), jazz/hip-hop (5th grade), and a 6th-8th grade elective.
   
• Activism Through Arts
  Activism Through Arts would like to offer the program "Lower Broadway Creative Mondays", which is an opportunity for Newark residents to take free visual arts and dance classes at "The Painter's Palette NJ", which is located on 9 7th Avenue. Classes will be provided on Mondays and will alternate between Dance and Painting classes for adults and children.
   
• Dramatic Impact
  Dramatic Impact will bring their Family Literacy event to four Newark schools: Louise A. Spencer/Miller, Belmont Runyon, BRICK Avon and Brick Peshine. The interactive family workshops offer parents and caregivers an opportunity to be actively involved in their children's academic and social growth, while helping build positive family relationships. The sessions engage families in storytelling and puppetry activities that strengthen language arts literacy skills and support the development of communication and interpersonal skills
   
• Elizabeth Youth Theater Ensemble (pictured above)
  "Granny Bombers Tiny Taggers" is an intergenerational art and oral history project. Senior citizens from Newark's Ironbound Senior Center and 5th graders from nearby Ann St School will create "blossoms" out of yarn during instructional "knit-ins" and share personal testimonies through theater-making techniques. The material generated will be transformed into a play. Newark area actors will be engaged to perform the free show at LIPS Gallery
   
• Forward Ever Sustainable Business Alliance
  The Power of Choice Exhibit was developed by Forward Ever Sustainable Business Alliance as a vehicle to explore localism in the broader contexts of its economic, social, and cultural impacts on the Newark community. Expanding upon the h photo exhibition, the film seeks to further explore success and challenges local businesses face in a changing economic landscape
   
• Yendor Productions
  Yendor Production in partnership with the Girls Scouts plan to create a mural dedicated Girl Scout and its legacy. A Yendor artist and girl scouts will design and produce a mural in Newark by partnering with local troops to celebrate the long legacy and current leadership activities of Newark girls. Having over forty murals Yendor welcomes this opportunity to work with and honor the Girl Scouts.
   
• Glass Roots
  GlassRoots Summer Youth Leadership Corps provides in-depth training on leadership/mentorship skills, while exposing youth to careers in art and preparing them to serve as mentors in an our summer glass-experience program. The Youth Leadership Corps (YLC) is ‘staffed’ by students who have participated in our other long term programs and who are ready to be trained as mentors
   
• Gallery Aferro
  Gallery Aferro will offer a second season of the Aferro Mobile Portrait Studio, going throughout city neighborhoods creating free portraits for everyday Newarkers of all ages. A documentation team of community youth will create a capstone for the project by documenting the project and creating a how-to manual for everyone to make their own Mobile Portrait Studio.
   
• Center for Court Innovation/Newark Community Solutions
  Launched in 2011 by the Center for Court Innovation, Newark Community Solutions is a community justice initiative that applies a problem-solving approach to low-level cases in Newark Municipal Court. Newark Community Solutions believes that treating defendants and victims with dignity and respect enhances the public’s trust in justice. Newark Community Solutions proposes to display art in the main corridors that reflect the strength, diversity, and history of the Newark community.
   
• ArtFront Galleries
  In the Fall 2017 and the Spring 2018 create a series of multi-week art galleries in the NHA Recreation Centers: Waterfront, Clubhouse, and TREC. Each gallery will include an artist talk and a community art event. Student interns will learn the "business of art". Primary among the many benefits is to bring rich cultural experiences to the under served populations of Newark in the North, western edge of Central, West and South Wards.
   
• Newark Mommies
  Building On Books is a monthly story time with a coordinating activity for children (under age 5) and their caregivers. In our first two years, we tied children’s literature to crafts and dance. Our new series, “Building on Books: OUR CITY,” will coordinate activities inspired by the city of Newark. In addition to reading children’s literature about cities and communities, the city of Newark will be both a medium and canvas.