The 2020 Lewis Prize Awardees have been announced and include multiple National Guild members! These 10 inspiring leaders are doing extraordinary work to build community, foster engaged citizens and support the holistic growth of young people through the catalytic force of music.

The Lewis Prize Board of Directors were so impressed by the 2020 Lewis Prize for Music finalists' commitment that they chose to invest in all of the finalists by giving three award levels. 

Meet the awardees and learn more: https://www.thelewisprize.org/finalists-2020

 

 

Learn more about the arts in your community at arts.gov

 

DATE: January 13, 2020
CONTACT: Victoria Hutter, hutterv@arts.gov, 202-682-5692

 

2020 MUSICAL THEATER SONGWRITING CHALLENGE OPENS FOR SUBMISSIONS

 

Washington, DC—Calling all high school songwriters! Beginning today, January 13, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Theatre Wing are accepting submissions to the 2020 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge. This national contest is for high school students with a passion for writing songs that could be part of a musical theater production and the wide range of musical styles represented in contemporary musicals. The goal of the program is to engage the musical theater field in nurturing the next generation of songwriters.

The Songwriting Challenge provides six winners with a coaching team consisting of a mentor and music director (both musical theater professionals) to hone an original song into a Broadway-ready composition and then have that song recorded by Broadway musicians and vocalists in New York City. Final songs will be distributed on streaming music platforms and compiled into a songbook created by Concord Theatricals. The final recordings of the songs by the 2019 winners are on the recording sessions landing page.

The application is simple and can be completed online. The deadline is April 6, 2020 at midnight ET.

The Arts Endowment and the Wing welcome back Disney Theatrical Productions, Concord Theatricals, and the National Music Publishers’ Association as Songwriting Challenge partners. 

Key dates and details for the 2020 Musical Theater Songwriting Challenge are:

•    After the submission deadline of April 6, 2020, the Arts Endowment and the Wing will convene panels in different regions of the country to review all submissions. Each panel consists of experienced songwriters and musicians who select one winner or a duo from its region in a blind competition. Those winners will be announced at the end of May 2020. 

•    Beginning in June, the winners work with their coaches remotely using video conferencing software followed by a weekend workshop later in the summer when the coaches travel to the winner’s hometown. To see workshops in action, go to the workshop landing page for the 2019 winners. At the end of the workshop, the song is transcribed for an ensemble and the winner has the opportunity to select the instruments and voices that make up their ensemble. 

•    The recording sessions take place in the fall when the artists come together in New York City to make the best recording possible. Go to the recording sessions landing page for audio, photos and other materials from the 2019 sessions. Lead vocalists last year included Derek Klena (Jagged Little Pill), Gizel Jimenez (Wicked), and Jessie Shelton (Hadestown) among others. 

To learn more and to apply, go to arts.gov/songwriting. To join the conversation on Twitter use #IWriteMusicals.

 

About the National Endowment for the Arts
Established by Congress in 1965, the NEA is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the Arts Endowment supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. Visit arts.gov to learn more about National Endowment for the Arts.

About the American Theatre Wing
The American Theatre Wing champions bravery, with a focus on developing the next generation of brave artists. We envision an American Theatre that is as vital, multi-faceted, and diverse as the American people. The Wing’s programs span the nation to invest in the growth and evolution of American theatre.

We provide theatre education opportunities for underserved students through the Andrew Lloyd Webber Initiative, develop the next generation of theatre professionals through the SpringboardNYC, Theatre Intern Network, and SwingSeats programs, incubate innovative theatre across the country through the National Theatre Company Grants, support emerging musical theatre songwriters through the Jonathan Larson® Grants in addition to the Songwriting Challenge, and illuminate the creative process through the Emmy-nominated “Working in the Theatre” documentary series. In addition to founding the Tony Awards®, which are co-presented with The Broadway League, the American Theatre Wing co-presents the Obie Awards®, Off Broadway’s Highest Honor, with The Village Voice. AmericanTheatreWing.org
 

From Arts Education Partnership:

This year, the Arts Education Partnership announced the addition of juvenile justice as a new focus area to its existing scope of work. Through increased funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education, AEP will report on opportunities for the arts in juvenile justice at the community, state and federal levels. This new work will analyze existing research, policies, practices and programs; identify potential information gaps; and provide policy considerations related to the arts in education within this focus area.

Participating in the arts can have positive academic and personal effects for students. Arts engagement can help support present and future outcomes and success for youths, including increased civic engagement, pursuit of high school graduation and interest in college enrollment. Positive outcomes can occur both in and out of school, with findings showing decreased delinquent behavior and increased impacts for historically underserved students.

Nationally, the landscape for this work has expanded, including the work of the Create Justice initiative,  Creative Youth Development National Partnership and the Shakespeare in American Communities program. Over the next year, AEP will join its partner organizations and other stakeholders in contributing to this conversation by sharing more about the role of the arts in youth justice reforms. To ensure that this work remains comprehensive and topical, AEP looks forward to incorporating input from stakeholders across the arts, juvenile justice and education fields.

Please consider this an invitation to share your ideas, questions, resources and programs related to the arts and system-impacted youth.

Read the full story >>

The Lewis Prize for Music has named ten finalists for it's three inaugural $500,000 awards. The Lewis Prize partners with music leaders in diverse and vibrant communities who create positive change by investing in young people. Congratulations to this impressive group of Creative Youth Development leaders from across the country who are enabling young people to thrive. Each finalist is deeply dedicated to strengthening young people in their communities through rigorous and diverse music programs.

Meet them all: https://www.thelewisprize.org/finalists-2020

NASA is seeking student art for its 2020 "We Are Going" contest.

“We Are Going” includes Americans of all ages. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia is inviting students grades K-12 to creatively visualize NASA’s science, technology and human exploration activities in the 2020 NASA Art Contest, using the theme “We Are Going.” The contest is open to all children grades K-12 attending public, private, parochial and homeschools who are residents of the United States.

The Art Contest submission period begins  Dec. 1, 2019  and concludes on Dec. 31, 2019 at midnight EST.

Learn more and submit >>

Adobe is now offereing several grants for organizations who do creative youth development work. From Adobe:

In partnership with TakingITGlobal, Adobe supports a global network of creative youth development organizations that are working to ensure equitable access to creative education for youth ages 13 to 24. Creative youth development organizations help young people build their creative skills and prepare for success in school, life, and work.

Creative Catalyst Award ($50,000 USD) Due January 9 

The Adobe Creative Catalyst Award recognizes outstanding community-based youth organizations that support young people’s creative development and engage creativity as a force for positive youth development and social impact.

Project & Collaboration Grants ($5000 to $7000 USD) Due June 15

Project & Collaboration grants allow creative youth development organizations to implement a project or collaboration that expands or deepens the creative opportunities they provide youth.

Hardware Grants ($2000 to $5000 USD) Due June 15 

Creative youth development organizations may apply for a grant of $2,000 to $5,000 USD to access hardware needed for digital media projects. This could include computers, cameras, iPhones, iPads, 360 video cameras, drones, etc.

Learn more about the grants >>

After the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the arts was cut from the budget this year, researchers found a new way to explore who has access to arts classes: the NAEP’s 2019 math assessment.

In a blog post from the Education Commission on the States, they write that "the math assessment can’t tell us much about how students performed in the arts, but it did ask students the following question: Are you taking an art course this school year (for example, drawing, painting, or studio art)?"

From the report: 

In one respect, though, the math assessment does the arts assessment one better: Where NAEP arts offered only national results, the mathematics assessment provides data broken out by state.

Here are the big takeaways from our analysis:

• Thirty-seven percent of eighth graders say they were taking an art course in 2019.
• There are stark differences among states, where art course-taking ranges from a low of 16% to a high of 68%.
• There are also disparities by students’ race, ethnicity, family income and school location.

The 2019 results largely confirm results from the 2016 NAEP arts assessment: In 2016, 43% of eighth graders said they had taken an art course that year; and results varied by race, ethnicity, gender, family income and school location.

Read the full post here >>

"I had always envisioned myself becoming a musician one day, but until this summer I’d never realized I could pursue music as a vocation, as opposed to just a passion project," writes Eleasah Whittaker. "Last spring, I began searching for a summer job, preferably one that paid and, ideally, one in the arts. At the same time, I understood that the probability of finding a paid summer job in the arts, as opposed to a volunteer position, was slim-to-none."

In this post for The Hechinger Report, Eleasah Whittaker writes about their experience finding an arts internship in sound design, and the importance of programs like this one to help young artists start careers in the arts. 

"All in all, I think that programs like these are vital for students like me who are interested in the arts, as there aren’t many apprenticeship-style programs out there — especially not ones for high school students. These internship opportunities allow students to immerse themselves in an actual arts profession, gain insights about business acumen as it relates to creative work, and learn more about their own interests and ways to pursue them. If nothing else, students can find clarity on whether they’d like to pursue a career in the arts at all."

Read the full article here.

New York City has announced the expansion of a Project Reset, a diversion program launched as a pilot for 16- and 17-year-olds in Manhattan in 2015. Now Project Reset offers diversion programs (programs that offer an alternative to the traditional justice system) to people of any age at all precincts in the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

Individuals arrested for low-level crimes can complete community-based programming instead of being handed jail time. Many of these programs use art and art-making to explore justice, accountability, and community. 

Artists Shaun Leonardo and Derek Fordjour were the first teaching artists to work with Project Reset back in 2017 and the principles they laid out are still at the core of the curricula across the program. “What art can do in this conversation with the justice system is see where a person might be restored,” Leonardo told CityLab. “When someone has an experience, in this case an arrest, that story is running them. Making art is a way of slowing down, seeing what’s at the heart of the story. Because quite often what’s missing in the telling of that story is how that person feels. So it’s a process of humanizing our narratives.”

Read the full article here.

From Americans for the Arts: October is National Arts & Humanities Month (NAHM)—a coast-to-coast collective recognition of the importance of culture in America. NAHM was launched by Americans for the Arts more than 30 years ago as National Arts Week in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993, it was reestablished by Americans for the Arts and national arts partners as a month-long celebration, with goals of:

FOCUSING on the arts at local, state, and national levels;

ENCOURAGING individuals and organizations to participate in the arts;

ALLOWING governments and businesses to show their support of the arts; and

RAISING public awareness about the role the arts and humanities play in our communities and lives.

There are many ways to get involved, from social media to hosting a conversation about arts in your community. 

Read more from AFTA.