| Summer Newsletter |
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Dear Friends of Community-Word Project: Every year we ask students in our collaborative arts residencies what they liked about the residency, and what they didn't like. It's always rewarding to read comments such as: "We got to express our feelings and then draw them." "The Teaching Artists encourage us to do our best. They don't give up on us." "I don't like that we don't have Community-Word every day." "We put our hearts to paper."
This year's murals capture our students' hearts, hopes, ideas, and dreams. Students begin the mural creation by selecting a line from their collaborative Community-Poem to illustrate. They then work with a CWP Visual Arts Teaching Artist to design and and paint their mural.
Click here to view all the murals created in CWP classroom residencies on our website.
For students at the two schools represented above, the opportunities to express themselves through visual arts are severely limited, as neither school has a visual arts teacher. Before they began their murals, students in CWP residencies visited museums, studied artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, Frida Kahlo, Gustave Klimt, and Leonardo da Vinci. They drew self-portraits and went on sketching walks in their neighborhoods. Along with the collaborative poems that inspired the murals, they also wrote individual poetry, and performed their original poems on stage.
In 2011-12, we will be serving more students than ever before, at more schools, including a new middle school in the Bronx which will have a student-curated gallery, and the Young Women's Leadership School of Brooklyn. We cannot do this important work alone; if you would like to join us in our mission to inspire New York City youth in underserved communities to read, interpret, and respond to their world, and to become active citizens, you can click here to make a secure contribution on line.
We are deeply grateful to the individuals, corporations, foundations and government agencies that make our work possible. Thank you for your partnership. |
A Big Community-Word Thank You to Linklaters!CWP students also share their aspirations and concerns through their original individual and collaborative poetry. These poems are collected and published in an anthology; all students receive an anthology and proudly shares it with their friends and families.
CWP anthologies are underwritten by the New York offices of Linklaters, an international law firm. Linklaters also sponsors publication celebrations at two of our partner schools, providing fruits and snacks, applauding student performances, and then joining the children in the classroom, where associates present students with their anthologies---and with a book of poetry, selected especially for their age.
If you would like one of this year's anthologies, please email Gay Haubner, Development Director, at ghaubner@communitywordproject.org. |
Community-Word Project Welcomes Two New Board Members
Robin Alperstein, a partner at Becker Glynn Melamed & Muffly LLP and Day Bishop, Director at AllianceBernstein are the two newest members of CWP's Board Of Directors.
When asked what attracted them to CWP, Robin replied, "As a parent of two young children in a diverse New York City public school, I am very excited to join the board of CWP. CWP does critically important work in making up for shortfalls in the hardest hit public schools. I look forward to helping the organization grow so that more children have access to the type of arts-based education that my own children have."
Day said, "Everybody wins - students learn to express themselves, teaching artists learn to articulate their creative process, New York city school teachers get a collaborative partner in the classroom, and we get a stronger community. An organization that benefits so many needs to grow, and I want to help make that happen."
