Check out our new residency program!

Young Audiences of Western New York has created an artist residency for schools based on the local history of the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad in WNY gives students an opportunity to learn about our region’s past, while increasing literacy and understanding of racial disparities. It is our goal to offer this residency in 20 schools in the 2010-2011 school year.

Learn more about the Underground Railroad in WNY residency, here.

Young Audiences WNY presents hundreds of individual programs, plus dozens of residencies, wherein teaching artists provide schoolchildren, their educators and families, with multi-disciplinary, multi-session education through the arts. These residencies create meaningful connections between artists and young people that might otherwise not be exposed to the arts—especially arts integrated into school curricula.

Reaching over 7 million school children every year, the Young Audiences network received the National Medal of Arts in 1994.  In 2002, Young Audiences of WNY was the recipient of the National Conference for Community and Justice Brother/Sisterhood Award in the Arts and the Commitment to Education Award from the Buffalo Alliance for Education. Young Audiences designated Young Audiences WNY as Affiliate of the Year for 2003.  This year, the Association of Teaching Artists, an international resource to the field, recognized Young Audiences WNY for our service to teaching artists.

While the mission of Young Audiences of Western New York, to bring the arts to all the young people in our area, has never changed, the ways and means have; we see a not-so-subtle shift from simply inspiring young people to see and appreciate art, to also participating and understanding the arts in context of the world in general, and their lives specifically.

Image above: Phonics Program: Alphabet Awareness performance at the Lydia T. Wright School of Excellence. Babik at left.

Enjoy our program PREMIERE of Underground Railroad in WNY at Ujima Company's Theatre Loft on Saturdays March 13-April 3.