Intensive Training Institute: True to Its Name

We’re proud to announce that Performing Arts Workshop’s first Intensive Training Institute (ITI) was an enormous success and a transformative experience. The Workshop brought together eight teachers and eight teaching artists to discuss ways of developing critical thinking through the arts in the classroom. Participants focused on elemental questions such as: What is critical thinking and how do we know we are engaging in it? How do we inspire students to think, feel and create? What are ways that the arts can challenge students to use their hearts, minds and imaginations while thinking about important issues in the world?

The ITI, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, began with a summer intensive that included an overnight retreat at the Marconi Center in Marshall, California. During the retreat, participants broke up into groups and discussed the Berkeley Rep’s production of Moliere’s The Miser, which they had seen three weeks prior. In small groups, participants analyzed the play, discussed themes, aesthetics, and style, and came up with deep questions raised by the script and by this particular production. Some examples of these “unanswerable questions” were: “What is greed?” “When do children leave home?” “Is telling the truth always the right decision?” and “How does the knowledge of our own mortality affect how we live?” The groups then composed performance pieces in response to one of these questions and performed them for each other.

The purpose of this exercise was to put teachers in the shoes of their students, to take risks, and to use their imaginations in response to a work of art. In debriefing about the exercise, participants commented upon the initial fear they had of performing something with very little rehearsal, and how the exercise required courage, teamwork, trust, spontaneity, and the ability to listen to others as well as one’s own instincts–all skills necessary in the artistic process, as well as in teaching. The retreat also included various ice-breaking exercises in which the artists and teachers used their bodies and voices to get to know each other, and to set individual goals for the summer Intensive, and for the seven month Institute.

We also screened the film To Be And To Have, a documentary about a one-room schoolhouse teacher, working in a farm town in France. The film explores the emotional and philosophical depth of the teaching profession, and the concept of teacher as artist.

The week continued with a series of hands-on presentations, workshops, and discussions led by local artists, activists, and educators. Among the guest presenters were:

• Kate Duffly and K. Ruby of Wise Fool Puppets, who led an exercise on creating magical and beautiful shadow puppet shows with limited materials;
• Elizabeth Summers and Garth Applegate, who led a workshop on how to work with and through resistance in the visual arts, music, and theater classrooms;
• Corrine Nagata, who led a dance composition workshop that left everyone in the group full of ideas and sweating through their shirts;
• And activist/writer/director/educator Rhodessa Jones, who led an inspired conversation on autobiographical theater, and demonstrated exercises from Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed.

True to its name, the week would be best described as “intense.” We covered a vast amount of territory and material in a short amount of time. The days were packed with activities and focused discussions, and required participants to be fully present in their minds and bodies. At the end of the week, teachers and teaching artists filled out evaluations, which were unanimously positive. Participants connected with others they may not ever have met in their regular lives, and formed important professional and artistic relationships.

The most successful aspect of the training for Performing Arts Workshop was the diversity, creativity, intelligence, and integrity of the group we assembled. The participants were teachers and artists of an enormous range of experience levels, ages, art forms, teaching philosophies, perspectives, ethnicities, and communities, brought together with the common desire to improve and deepen their work in the classroom. The group approached the training with a high level of professionalism and optimism, which set the standard for the week and the rest of the year.

In the fall, participants will reconvene once a month for a dinner, to discuss issues that have come up “in the field” with youth in their actual classrooms, and to reflect upon the ways the summer has influenced their curricula, lesson plans, and approaches to teaching.

Kung Fu Wows at Mission Education Center

Playgrounds are usually loud places. However, at 9:30 a.m. on May 11, forty 4th and 5th grade students at San Francisco’s Mission Education Center silenced the playground. Under the direction of Workshop Teaching Artist, Scott Phillips, the students performed their kung fu skills for the rest of the student body. Younger students stood on the perimeter, their faces pressed up against the gate. Everyone waited to see what the kids had been doing since November, in their Performing Arts Workshop residency.

Principal Debbie Molof introduced the performance in Spanish, explaining how the 4th and 5th grade students had been studying kung fu once per week with Scott, and were now going to perform what they had learned. The students took to the stage, and launched into choreographed kicks, punches, and poses, while Phillips played percussion and called out the moves. “Horse stance!” “Now, double kick!” “Now, face your partner!”

At the end of the group performance, Phillips surprised everyone with a kung fu routine of his own, and then took some questions from the students. “How long have you studied kung fu?” “How long have the other students taken kung fu?” “Will we get to take kung fu?”

Later, Phillips taught the students the philosophy behind the movement. “Kung fu means doing good for your community”, Phillips told the school. “For children, kung fu means taking care of your health and protecting your family.” That morning, Mission Ed students of all ages learned from their classmates’ performing arts residency. They shuffled back to their classrooms, tried a few moves, and hoped for a kung fu class of their own next year.

New Faces

Jessica Mele, The Workshop’s new Program Coordinator:

Lynn Johnson, Board Member:

Monique Olivier, Board Member:

Bay Area Arts Educators Hold Conference on Social Justice

How are the arts a medium for building communities and learning to create a just and equitable society? On August 18th and 19th, Performing Arts Workshop helped answer that question. The Workshop helped organize “Making Art, Making Change: Catalyst 2006”, a conference about art and social change that targeted youth, parents, youth workers, and artists.

Conceived over a year ago, the conference began as a casual conversation among members of the Greater Bay Area Arts Education Network (GBAAEN). Workshop Executive Director, Tom DeCaigny, and other members of GBAAEN noticed that, while the goals of many arts, youth development, and social justice organizations in the Bay Area are congruent, there is little collaboration among them. To address this issue, the group devised a plan for a unique conference that would bring together leaders from these communities to explore how artistic disciplines can create social and intellectual connections to bring about local, positive, social change.

The Performing Arts Workshop, as part of GBAAEN, became one of the driving forces behind “Making Art, Making Change”, hiring Conference Coordinator, Deirdre Visser, and providing staff support for the Steering Committee. Generously supported by the Shulte Grant for the Arts and Crafts, and the Fort Mason Foundation, the GBAAEN brought various stakeholders to the Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason to perform, create, play, and build a local movement through art. Visser was instrumental in building a coalition of community organizations for participation, and recruiting local artists to showcase their work at the conference.

The conference kicked off on Friday, August 18, with a party where local performers, Hyim, Youth Speaks, and the DJ Project (a program at CellSpace), and advocates for social justice entertained the crowd. Former San Francisco Board of Supervisors President, Matt Gonazalez, spoke about the relationship between art and community in building a civil society.

On Saturday, August 19, participants began the day with a performance and workshop by DestinyArts, the Oakland-based youth performance group that addresses issues as diverse as community violence and global warming, through art mediums as diverse as martial arts, dance, and theater. Participants played, moved, danced, and learned to trust each other through a series of community-building movement exercises. YouthSpeaks conducted a writing workshop for all participants, to examine the role of the visual arts in the media’s portrayal of youth. The conference also played host to the President and Vice President of the United States – in the form of Amos Glick and Ed Holmes, of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Ras Mo Moses, a local poet, performer and Performing Arts Workshop teaching artist, along with students from CellSpace, treated participants to a noontime performance of spoken word poetry and song.

Kearney Street Workshop, Performing Arts Workshop, SCRAP, Glitter and Razz, and CellSpace led workshops examining the role of different art forms–theater, writing, visual art (collage, graffiti art)–in creating social change. At the end of the day, Santa Clara University Dance Department Director, David Popalisky, performed a dance piece based on interviews with exonerated convicts.

Over the weekend, 150 participants worked together to build a plan for achieving social justice in their local communities. Through art and arts learning, Making Art, Making Change, and the Performing Arts Workshop, built lasting relationships among youth and adult artists and activists, with one common goal: positive social change.

Program Notes

I’m happy to report we ended the 2005-2006 school year on a very positive note, and have recently completed an action packed summer. Amidst our planning for the upcoming 2006-2007 school year, this summer we hosted the Intensive Training Institute, a rigorous teacher and teaching artist course coming out of our Professional Development Program. In August, the Greater Bay Area Arts Education Network planned and put on, Making Art, Making Change, a conference geared towards bringing together participant-learners from the various communities of artists, youth, and social justice workers. The purpose of the conference was to explore and illustrate how the various artistic disciplines can offer opportunities to practice critical thinking, investigate creative ideas and make new social and intellectual connections.

Keep your eyes peeled for new and exciting program offerings coming out of Performing Arts Workshop in 2006-2007! We are adding several new teaching artists to our roster, and, along with our current art forms, will also be offering West African Dance, Capoeira, Hip Hop, and Salsa. We hosted a party to thank our teaching artists and staff from last year, and are pleased to note that we will be working with the vast majority of them this year as well (to the relief of our partner schools and students, who grow very attached to our artists!).

We’ve been very pleased with the outcomes from last year, and feel it is due in no small part to our outstanding staff, including Anne–E Wood, Associate Artistic Director, the mastermind of the Intensive Training Institute, and Jessica Mele, who was promoted from Program Assistant to Program Coordinator in less than three months due to her outstanding and tireless work.

I hope you all had a sunny, relaxing summer!

Best Wishes,
Kaitlin McNally-Murphy
Program Director