Teaching artists have brought their creative knowledge to K–12 classrooms, but there are many new opportunities for artists to engage communities that are outside of the traditional classroom. This symposium will introduce practitioners to experts in the fields of restorative practice, inclusion, creative aging, and even municipal government. Reconsider how your artistic practice can be transferred into these new learning settings. We will showcase practical tools and skills to support your development in these areas; through panel discussions and breakout sessions, we’ll explore the ways that you can expand your network and build your teaching toolkit.
The Symposium will feature a keynote address from Eric Booth and a day of programming at The University of the Arts. The event is made possible by The University of the Arts, Mural Arts Philadelphia and the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation.
Your ticket will include coffee in morning, lunch and a happy hour reception at the end of the event.
Program
8:30-9 am Registration check-in; Welcome Coffee Reception
9:00-9:45 am Dancing with Donuts - a Creative Movement Experience on incorporating movement into your teaching practice with Teresa VanDenend Sorge
10:00 am Where is Teaching Artistry Headed?: Present Tense, Future Remarkable - Keynote presentation by Eric Booth
11:00-12:30 Imagine the Possibilities: Teaching Artists Working in Alternative Spaces moderated by Beth Feldman Brandt, Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation
Panelists:
- Charlie Miller, Deputy Director Art-Reach
- Rachel Barnard, PAIR Artist in Residence
- Annie Montegomery, Director of Education Lifetime Arts, Inc.
- Erika Guadalupe Nunez, Artist in Residence & Facilitator Juntos
- Michael O'Bryan, Director of Youth and Young Adult Programs at The Village of Arts and Humanities
12:30-1:45 Topic Lunch
2 pm + 3 pm Breakout sessions (sessions will repeat at 3 pm)
Working with Older Adults with Lifetime Arts, Inc. - Annie Montegomery, Director of Education and Nathan Majoros, Program Director
City Partnerships: Rachel Barnard, PAIR Artist in Residence and Diya Vij, Co-Director, Public Artists in Residence, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Inclusion: Charlie Miller, Deputy Director Art-Reach and Roger Ideshi, JD, OT/L, FAOTA Program Director & Associate Professor Program in Occupational Therapy at Temple University
Creamos Juntos: Working in Immigrant Communities on an Arts-Based Resistance: Erika Guadalupe Nunez, Artist in Residence & Facilitator Juntos
Working with Restorative Practices: Michael O'Bryan, Director of Youth and Young Adult Programs at The Village of Arts and Humanities
4-6 pm Happy Hour Forum
4:30-5:30 Office Hours 1:1 meetings with experts (pre-register for time slots during lunch)
6 pm Post-event meet up at Tavern on Broad
MEET THE PRESENTERS
Eric Booth - Keynote
In 2015 Eric Booth was honored with the nation’s highest award in arts education, and was named one of the 25 most influential people in the arts in the U.S. He began as a Broadway actor, and became a businessman (his company became the largest of its kind in the U.S. in 7 years), and author of six books, including the bestseller The Everyday Work of Arts, and the most recent is Playing for Their Lives. He has been on the faculty of Juilliard (12 years), Tanglewood (5 years), The Kennedy Center (20 years), and Lincoln Center Education (for 34 years, where now he is the leader of their Teaching Artist Development Lab). He serves as a consultant for many arts organizations (including seven of the ten largest U.S. orchestras), cities, states and businesses around the U.S.. A frequent keynote speaker, he founded the International Teaching Artist Conferences, and gave the closing keynote to UNESCO's first-ever world arts education conference. ericbooth.net
Annie Montegomery, Director of Education Lifetime Arts, Inc.
A master teaching artist and trainer, Annie leads the design and development of Lifetime Arts many professional development efforts. She facilitates trainings for a wide range of practitioners including teaching artists, librarians, arts organizations and funders. As a teaching artist, Annie has taught numerous Creative Aging memoir and performance workshops throughout the metropolitan region in public libraries and community settings. Additionally, she has taught for 15 years with such organizations as The New Victory Theatre, Disney Theatrical Production, Creative Theatrics and others. She is an active theatre artist as an actor, director and playwright. Annie received her bachelors in acting from Boston University and her masters in educational theatre from New York University. www.anniemeekmontgomery.com
Beth Feldman Brandt, Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation
Beth Feldman Brandt is the Executive Director of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation that supports arts education, community-based arts programs and teaching artists in Philadelphia. In addition to her responsibility for all aspects of the Foundations’ grantmaking and operations, Beth directs a full slate of free professional development workshops for over 300 teaching artists each year. As part of her work at the Foundation, Beth was the co-director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) in Philadelphia, a national initiative of the Ford Foundation to improve conditions for individual artists. Prior to 2000, she was Project Director of Culture Builds Communities (CBC), a funding initiative of the William Penn Foundation; Project Director of the Arts Education Development Project for The Pew Charitable Trusts; and Executive Director of Prints in Progress.
Beth is a poet and performer whose work includes two books, Sage and Solace, as well as RetroLove, an evening-length performance commissioned by Philadelphia Jazz Project as well as a book and album. Beth chairs the Poet Laureate Governing Committee of the City of Philadelphia. She holds degrees from The Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania.
Charlie Miller, Deputy Director Art-Reach
Charlie joined Art Reach in June 2013 after having served as a Human Rights Advocate in the West Bank of Palestine. Prior to living in the Middle East, Charlie worked in guest relations and programming for an International Contemplative Center outside Philadelphia. An accomplished Event Planner and Project Manager, Charlie’s main focus is on grassroots social justice work that is accessible to everyone. He served as the Director of Programming, where he managed and implemented Art-Reach’s programming initiatives. In June 2017, he became the Deputy Director and will oversee daily operations and strategic planning.
Dia Vij Co-Director, Public Artists in Residence, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Diya Vij is the Special Projects Manager for the Commissioner's Unit at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA). In this role, she is Co-Director of the Public Artists in Residence program where she embeds artists in City government to use creative practice to address our most pressing civic challenges. She also leads all special curatorial and artist-focused projects from DCLA’s Commissioner’s Unit including the City’s recent work on permanent monuments as well as exhibitions at City Hall and Gracie Mansion. In addition, she manages the agency’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative that aims to foster a just, inclusive cultural community, from the workforce and artists to audiences. Diya was previously with the Queens Museum. She has an MA in Art History from Hunter College and a BA from Bard College.
Erika Guadalupe Nunez, Artist in Residence & Facilitator Juntos
Erika is a queer immigrant, artist, and community organizer for immigrant rights in Philadelphia. During the day, she works as the Manager of Community Programs at Fleisher Art Memorial and spends the rest of her free time as the lead facilitator of Juntos-an immigrant right group based in South Philly. After emigrating from Mexico at a young age, Erika remained undocumented until receiving her green card in 2013. As a result, Erika’s visual art pays homage to her culture and upbringing while simultaneously serving as a tool for social change. As a community organizer, she has spearheaded and facilitated local and national campaigns to demand rights for the immigrant community. In 2015, she was awarded the David Acosta Revolutionary Leadership Award from GALAEI with a commendation from the City of Philadelphia for her community work and received the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant in 2015 and 2017 to support her work with immigrant and queer youth. Last year, she was selected as an Emerging City Champion by the Knight Foundation to lead an art-based civic engagement project called Juntos Creators at Juntos, a local immigrant rights organization. Most recently, Erika was awarded the Leeway Transformation Award for her demonstrated commitment to long term art and social change work.
Michael O’Bryan, Director of Youth and Young Adult Programs at The Village of Arts and Humanities
Through the healing power of art, Michael O’Bryan serves as an advocate for human rights and social change in underserved communities. His professional experience touches the worlds of performance art, public health, and developmental science. Much of his work has centered on amplifying the voices of marginalized populations including: adjudicated youth, youth and families experiencing homelessness, and migrant farm-workers. Project experience includes work with: The Arts and Business Council of The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, ART180, The US Attorney's Office for The Eastern District of PA, and Mural Arts Philadelphia. Michael is also highly regarded as a thoughtleader and educator, presenting at national and international conferences and institutions. In 2017 he was named an Emerging City Champion by The Knight Foundation and 8-80 Cities, and is an inaugural Urban Innovation Fellow at Drexel University's Lindy Institute. Currently, Michael serves as Director of Youth and Young Adult Programs at The Village of Arts and Humanities and as a consultant on projects exploring the intersections of trauma informed practice and community well-being.
Nathan Majoros, Director of Programs, Lifetime Arts
Nathan Majoros is responsible for the day-to-day supervision and coordination of Lifetime Arts’ multiple national projects. He provides expert technical assistance to teaching artists, librarians and other Creative Aging stakeholders, and routinely presents information about Lifetime Arts and the field of Creative Aging. Nathan is a graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA where he received his Master of Arts in Teaching and Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees. Nathan has several years of experience in arts education curriculum development and is a practicing visual artist, primarily as a painter and a printmaker.
Rachel Barnard, PAIR Artist in Residence
Rachel G. Barnard is a social practice artist formally trained as an architect. In 2012 she founded Young New Yorkers (YNY), an arts diversion programs for teens being prosecuted as adult in criminal courts. To date over 700 young people have been sentenced to make art at YNY instead of jail or other adult sanctions. Most participants have their adult criminal cases dismissed and sealed.
Teens sentenced to YNY use art to become advocates for themselves and for criminal legal reform. Each program culminates in a participant-led public art project that addresses a criminal legal issue of their choice. Teens in the past have focused on local policing, economic disparity, solitary confinement, gun violence, and the local impacts of mass incarceration. Teens then invite the very criminal legal professionals involved in their sentencing to attend the public projects – this in turn humanizes the culture of the courtrooms, the professional members of which possess discretionary power over each teen’s case outcome.
Barnard’s social art practice brings large groups of people together from diverse, and oftentimes adversarial, communities to create new spaces of belonging. As such the connections made within and between communities through a project take priority over a completed work.
Roger I. Ideishi, JD, OT/L, FAOTA Program Director & Associate Professor Program in Occupational Therapy at Temple University
Roger Ideishi has worked to provide community access and opportunity for children with autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. He advises community organizations on building meaningful learning experiences for children and their families. The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), Flint Institute of Arts (Flint, MI), Michigan Council of Arts & Cultural Affairs (Lansing, MI), Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra & Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh, PA), New Jersey Center for Aquatic Science (Camden, NJ), Delaware Theatre Company (Wilmington, DE), People’s Light & Theater (Malvern, PA), Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadelphia Orchestra, & Academy of Natural Sciences (Philadelphia, PA) are some of the community organizations where he advises. He has published and presented his work in regional, national, and international venues. He is an advocate of experiential, community, and service-based learning. He and his students have collaborated with various organizations to serve vital community interests resulting in the creation of outdoor play and garden spaces, community mosaic murals, and movement/arts-based curricula to enhance the quality of life for children and families. He is the principal investigator on a funded project examining the cultural and linguistic factors of English language learning families of children with autism navigating the health, education, and community service systems. He is a co-investigator on a Canadian Institute of Health Research international project (Canada, Australia, USA) exploring the factors, impacts, and outcomes of children and youth engagement during therapeutic experiences. He received his BS in Occupational Therapy from University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and his JD in Law from Temple University. He is a Fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association and a Board of Trustee member for the American Occupational Therapy Foundation.
Teresa VanDenend Sorge, Creative Dance Specialist
Teresa Vandenend Sorg, EdM is the developer and Director of Koresh Kids Dance which provides creative dance classes for nearly 500 Philadelphia public school children each week. She engages with others to build dance that is accessible and meaningful and explores the true human experience while fostering a collaborative artistic experience. Teresa is a full-time lecturer at Muhlenberg College in the department of Theatre and Dance and teaches classes in Modern Dance, Dance Education, and Dance and Society while also directing the Muhlenberg Community Dance Center. Her most recent dance works include artistic collaborations with text, props, and sculpture. Her solo and group work has been shown at multiple showcases in Philadelphia and Allentown, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, American College Dance Association Conference, and the Temple Alumni Showcase. Teresa has completed the Summer Dance Institute for Teachers under the direction of Anne Green Gilbert, as well as the Annual Institute for Arts and Transformation with Buildabridge International. She has also served as teaching faculty and an Artist on Call for Buildabridge.
Teresa has presented creative dance in community settings workshops at the National Guild for Community Arts Education, the American College Dance Association Conference, the Jubilee Conference, Arts and Literacy Conference at University of Pennsylvania, and Dance TAG. For the past ten years, every week, Teresa has enthusiastically led creative dance with children in grades 3-5 in East Mt. Airy through Koresh Kids Dance.
Teresa holds a BA in Dance Education and Dance Performance/Choreography from Hope College in Holland, Michigan and an Masters of Education in Dance degree from Temple University.