Pairing professional artists with students

Artist Connect is a program that began in 2016, which focuses on providing free artistic opportunities for students in underserved rural areas of our region. The program aims to place professional, local artists from a variety of disciplines into the classrooms of Brazos Valley school districts, bringing the opportunities directly to the students and schools at no cost to them. In the inaugural year for this program, we worked with two elementary schools in Navasota ISD to provide the opportunities as full-day workshops hosted in the art teacher’s room, so that the majority of the students can attend during their class’ “specials” rotation.

 

In its first year, each school hosted both a performing arts and spoken word poetry program. We engaged affiliate theatre and poetry groups to select professional artists to lead the workshops. The contracted artists agreed to create lesson plans and activities which aligned with fine arts TEKS standards for elementary students. We directly impacted 630 kindergarten through 5th grade students overall in the programs. The demographics of the schools served by this program are 50% Hispanic, 35% African American, and 15% Anglo.

 

In 2018, we doubled our impact by offering 8 programs in three Title 1 Elementary schools in Brazos and Grimes County. We reached over 1,000 kids with performing arts workshops by Unity Theatre in Brenham and visual arts workshops (painting/drawing and paper sculpture) from our own Navasota Artists in Residence. The demographics of the schools served from 2018 are 60% Hispanic, 24% African American, and 12% Anglo.