Lifetime Arts has recently announced two major grants that will allow them to increase their impact in the field of creative aging. Last year, the National Guild, in partnership with Lifetime Arts, announced the Catalyzing Creative Aging program, which will support 20 organizations in the creation of new, professionally led arts programs for older adults. Moving into 2018, Lifetime Arts has launched two new initiatives that will strengthen creative aging across the country:

• $1.5M multi-year grant from Aroha Philanthropies – Significant multi-year support from Aroha Philanthropies will enable Lifetime Arts to respond to the growing national demand for its services by building to scale over the next 3-5 years. It will strengthen and increase Lifetime Arts' professional staff; aid in the development of a new on-demand, modular, learning portal allowing Lifetime to reach more communities across the nation with their customized training and support; improve and expand the organization's communications capabilities; help support strategic national partnerships; and ensure the continued quality of Lifetime Arts' capacity-building programs and resources.
• $600K grant from New York Community Trust – This grant will support a two-year effort to evaluate and strengthen Creative Aging programs in New York City. Lifetime Arts will conduct more than 20 live training sessions around New York City designed to educate and inspire the staffs of over 250 senior centers, 50 arts organizations, as well as up to 175 individual teaching artists.

Learn more about both initiatives at www.lifetimearts.org.

About Lifetime Arts

Lifetime Arts was founded as a service organization in 2008 with a singular goal – to enhance the quality of life for older adults by promoting Creative Aging – through arts education. Lifetime Arts works nationally to build the capacity of organizations and individuals who serve older adults to initiate, develop, implement and sustain professionally conducted arts education programs.

3Arts, a Chicago-based non-profit grantmaking organization, recently announced the recipients of the prestigious 3Arts Award, which provides $25,000 to Chicago-based women artists, artists of color, and artists with disabilities working in the performing, teaching, and visual arts sectors. This year, in the teaching artist category, 3Arts recognized Ayriole Frost, a longtime friend of the Guild, regular Conference volunteer, and director of Guild member Shift:Englewood Youth Orchestra.

The 10th annual 3Arts Awards celebration was presented on Monday, November 6, by the 3Arts Board of Directors and Event Host Committee in a celebratory gathering at The Mid-America Club at the Aon Center. The event also featured performances by past 3Arts awardees including bassist Tatsu Aoki, blues guitarist/singer Lurrie Bell, singer/songwriter Jess Godwin, and President and CEO of the Chicago Children’s Choir Josephine Lee.

She is a sought-after workshop leader for creative music projects around the country, including a program of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra called OrchKids. Her history of working with music programs focused on social justice, including The People’s Music School Youth Orchestras and Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project, as well as her own program in Englewood, led to her joining North Park University’s faculty as part of their Certificate in Music for Social Change and Human Values.

You can learn more about the award and Ayriole’s fellow awardees here.

In the Summer Issue of Voices—Journal of the American Academy of Psycotherapists, Kwame Scruggs, founder and director of Alchemy Inc. (Akron, OH), details his own personal story as well as the approach used at Alchemy to support black male youth. Beginning with a myth entitled The Young Giant, Scruggs explores how mythmaking can be a powerful tool for exploring personal narrative and creating vulnerability; how the space you create and the tools you use with your young people dictate the ability to build connections; and how the “I am less than” narrative becomes a destructive cycle for our students and also for ourselves.

“Myths are complex stories crafted for interpretation by each person who hears the story. Each myth is a warehouse of knowledge, a story told for its capacity to help us make sense of the world and to learn how to live more intensely within it. Unlike fairytales and folklore, which tend to have happy endings, mythical stories teach us great truths about being human. In myth, as in life, the gifts we carry for the world are often embedded in our wounds. We awaken to our gifts through the healing of those wounds,” Scruggs writes.

The article details Alchemy’s process, including a focus on the development theories developed by:

• Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child
• The Akan System of Life-Cycle Development
• C.G. Jung
• Joseph Campbell and common themes in myth

According to Scruggs, “More than 1,500 students have attended our program since its inception in 2004. Eighty students currently comprise our three core groups. In 2011, our Core Group 1 graduated 26 young men; 24 entered college, most with academic or sports scholarships. To date, 10 have graduated college: two have advanced degrees, one is presently in graduate school, two will graduate with bachelor’s degrees this year, two are still actively continuing their education, and two are working and attending school in the evening. This is the power of myth.”

On September 15, 2017, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities presented the Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in Arts Education to Sitar Arts Center. The award, presented at the historic Lincoln Theatre, is one of the most prestigious honors conferred by the District of Columbia to individual artists, teachers, and arts organizations.

Upon receiving the award, Sitar’s executive director Maureen Dwyer said, “The Mayor’s Arts Award is a validation of Sitar Arts Center’s commitment to the role of the arts in bringing people together and in building a stronger and more inclusive city. The need for places of belonging has never been more important as many of the children and families that Sitar Arts Center embraces each day feel more and more vulnerable and isolated. We stand with our families who share in our mission of creating community. They deserve this recognition and so much more.”

The award recognizes what Sitar Arts Center has long known to be true and what numerous studies confirm—access to the arts is linked to greater well-being in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. More than 80% of Sitar Arts Center’s school-aged students are from a low-income household—a reflection of Sitar’s pledge to help low-income families live and thrive in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.

About Sitar Arts Center

Sitar Arts Center provides young people in its inner-city community the opportunity to discover their gifts in the visual and performing arts. The Center’s programs are built on the knowledge that exposure to the arts dramatically enhances learning skills, cognitive developments, social awareness and self-esteem.

The summer issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) features a profile of The Wooden Floor (Santa Ana, CA), a dance organization that has scaled its arts education model while still maintaining a commitment to tight-knit community outreach. For over three decades, The Wooden Floor (TWF) has used its dance curriculum to help students break cycles of poverty and commit to attending college—for many of the students, they are the first person in their family to attend.

According to SSIR, “TWF’s leadership team decided that they had a responsibility to share the TWF program but preserve the effective execution of its local operations. It was serving less than 1 percent of Santa Ana children eligible for the program, and local funders needed assurance that their donations would be utilized for operations nearby, not across the country.”

To expand their reach, TWF decided to provide its comprehensive model by using a licensing partnership agreement with other nonprofits.

“We provide each licensed partner with The Wooden Floor in a Box: consulting, training, and curriculum to implement our program model for a license fee,” Reese explains. “In this way, organizations can function independently under their own governance, financial, and branding structures.”

Learn more about TWF and their model here.

About The Wooden Floor

Founded in 1983, The Wooden Floor (TWF) is one of the foremost creative youth development nonprofit organizations in the country. TWF transforms the lives of young people in low-income communities through the power of dance and access to higher education. In Orange County and through national licensed partners, they use a long-term approach grounded in exploratory dance education to foster the confidence and gifts within each child to innovate, communicate, and collaborate – skills necessary for success in school and in life. 100 percent of students who graduate from The Wooden Floor immediately enroll in higher education.

Community Music Center of Boston (the Music Center) has appointed Lecolion Washington as executive director through a national search process guided by Arts Consulting Group. Washington begins at the Music Center in September 2017 and is currently executive director of the PRIZM Ensemble and Director of In-Schools Programs for the Memphis Music Initiative. He succeeds David Lapin who has been the Music Center’s Executive Director for a record-breaking 34 years.

“I am extremely honored that the board of Community Music Center of Boston has selected me as the incoming Executive Director.” said Lecolion Washington. “After meeting with the board and spending time with the senior staff, I feel like I was born to be part of the work that the Music Center is doing in Boston. I’m very excited about the future!"

Lecolion Washington has been a staunch advocate for the relevance of music as an agent for social   change. He was the co-founder/executive director of the PRIZM Ensemble, an organization whose mission is to build a diverse community through chamber music education, youth development, and performance.

You can learn more about the appointment of Washington here.