WNY Rural Teaching Artists Development Program

WNY Rural Teaching Artist Development Program with YA-WNY Staff and Master Teaching Artist at our retreat at Gilda's Club. Left to right, back to front: Bill Ward, Holly Johnson - Education & Artistic Director, Helga MacKinnon - Executive Director, C. Mick Fambro, Lisa Surace, Tina Christy, Sherry Robbins - Master Teaching Artist, Dana Block, Sarah Hooper, Dylaina Young, Ingrid Reymers, Lisa Barrett. Absent from photo: Edreys Wajed, who was on tour in Canada.

With support from the Dana Foundation, YA-WNY is training artists living in or near rural areas with backgrounds or an interest in Theater, Dance, and/or Music to become Teaching Artists.  Artists were selected for the Rural Teaching Artist Development Program through an audition and interview process.

The Rural Teaching Artist Development Program is underway in Fall 2008.  The focus of this program is to provide training to artists living in or near rural areas, in the fundamental concepts of arts-in-education and the logistics of working as teaching artists.  This program is focused on Erie, Niagara, Genesee, Orleans, Wyoming, Cattaraugus, Allegany, and Chautauqua Counties

What is a teaching artist? A teaching artist is a professional artist who teaches young people and works with other educators to integrate the arts into core curriculum subjects like English or Social Studies.  Teaching artists might work in schools or community venues, providing programs ranging from single performances, to classroom workshops, to multi-session residencies.

The new teaching artists attend specialized introductory workshops.  After which, each new teaching artist is paired with an experienced mentor teaching artist to learn to model an existing YA-WNY program.  After this period of training, new teaching artists are encouraged to develop their own programs that showcase their individual talents.

YA-WNY is a not-for-profit arts-in-education organization whose mission is to make the arts a part of young people’s lives in order to enhance their development as creative and productive human beings.  Operating for over 46 years, YA-WNY is the Western New York affiliate of Young Audiences, Inc., the nation’s leading source of arts-in-education services.  With a teaching artist roster of over 100 of the region’s finest artists in a variety of media, YA-WNY reaches more than 100,000 young people and their families every year.  The income these artists make as teaching artists helps sustain their professional careers, which contributes to making Western New York one of the most arts-rich regions in the country. www.yawny.org

Funding for this program has been provided by The Dana Foundation (www.dana.org.) The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropy with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education.  Through their Arts Education Rural Initiative, the Dana Foundation provides funding for professional development training programs for teaching artists from the performing arts who live in rural areas.