ARTS ED: Opera Written by MI Children!

Please find some of the press coverage that InsideOut Literary Art Project and the Michigan Opera Theater have received for the Hanstein Elementary School's third and fourth grade students' original production of the opera The Ringer of the Moon:

Listen to Principal Bernadine Carroll and the students from Hanstein Elementary School talk about the first ever opera written by children. (Note: The link brings you to a DPS radio show, where you will find the opera segment in the middle.)http://www.wrcjfm.org/ondemand/dps/ondemand.htm

Read more about the students' original production of the opera The Ringer of the Moon in the Detroit Free Press.

ARTS ED: GR-area Students Create Poetry Ezine

The Grand Rapids Humanities Council has announced the launch of a new web venture called Through the 3rd Eye, an ezine full of poetry, commentary, and literary news and created by area students, ages 13-21, under the mentorship of Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Rodney Torreson. The site was made possible in part by a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

http://throughthe3rdeye.com/

Traverse City Film Fest begins today! 7/29-8/3

Arguably the most amazing film festival currently here in Michigan, the Traverse City Film Festival is the brainchild of Michael Moore and has transformed his adopted-hometown into a mecca for film buffs nationwide. Last Sunday's edition of the Detroit Free Press had FOUR articles on this Film Fest alone!

As wonderful as we think it is that Madonna is coming home to Michigan for the TCFF, the real stars of the show for us are our friends from The Art Place in Suttons Bay who are offering three great Animation and Film workshops for youth of all ages, in official partnership with the TCFF. Go TAP! :)

ARTS ED: Visual, Performing and Applied Arts in MI High Schools

This blog is an incredible resource of information for those in Michigan trying to cultivate creativity in our children through the public school system. It is dedicated to doing this by using the Michigan Merit Curriculum Visual, Performing, and Applied Arts Credit , which is now required for high school graduation here in our state.

A learning community to maximize Michigan's capacity to support creativity through the 1-credit graduation requirement in the visual, performing, and applied arts.

http://mivpaa.blogspot.com/

MI Artist Uses Art to Rescue "At Risk" Youth

This documentary is great. Hector Perez has close ties to my family. Growing up in the Sunnyside neighborhood in Adrian, Hector was a young vato, or hoodlum, heading down a dangerous path and messing with herion. My father, Julio Perazza, was a counselor with the Upward Bound program at the time where he introduced Hector to the art of photography. Hector is now a very successful and inspirational artist and motivational figure in his own right, but he still remembers the difference the arts made to him during that pivotal time:

"... I was just dreaming about your father and the day I told him that I was messing with 'tecate' or Mexican heroin. He came down from Detroit to Adrian's Upward Bound. I grew up in Sunnyside ... Your father was a counselor. So he was the first person to show me his Pentax. He took the time to share his passion, so I felt special ... that moment of SLR instruction fed my curiosity about something positive rather than the tecate. Your father had a magnetic personality..."

I can't help but think that the hand my father reached out to Hector several decades ago, helped to inspire the amazing ways Hector is currently giving back to "at risk" youth :')

RESOURCE: Metropolitan Group

Nonprofits from all sectors are being forced to think broader not only in terms of partnership potential but also the pivotal role that 'public will' plays and who they need to get 'buy-in' from in order to achieve the necessary momentum to actually affect change. The Metropolitan Group are experts in terms of assisting nonprofits with these daunting taks:

Metropolitan Group is a social change agency that crafts strategic and creative services that empower social service organizations to build a just and sustainable world.

Click here to see their section on Heritage, Arts & Culture.

RESOURCE: ArtsManager.org

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. has put together an amazing FREE online resource at ArtsManager.org, I just joined up in order to gain access to their Resource Center and learn from other arts managers around the country:

"Get on board the fastest growning online community for arts managers and join the discussion now!"

http://www.artsmanager.org/home/

ARTICLE: Young Michigan Talent's List of Demands

This is a great article written by a young professional in Michigan about young professionals in Michigan and what they need from the rest of us in this state!

http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/millennials15208.aspx

RESOURCE: Playnation an Online Video Gallery

The Gistter project at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair was a great success! The site is now filled with tons of great content, browse the content and feel free to leave comments (you can leave "anonymous" comments also if you like). That's what Web 2.0 is all about: inserting yourself and your perspective into the content so it becomes a two-way street and stimulates more discussion and movement across the web.

We shared a tent with an awesome project called Playnation. The folks were with a UMTV partnership called Playgallery, "a gallery for time-based work on tv and on the web" and they set up an animation station which allowed fair goers of all ages to make their own animations right there on the spot. I've embedded one of their clips below:

ARTS ED: Art video game

This group began "following" me using Twitter, so I decided to check them out. Apparently they have a very basic video game that deals with 2 players: Art Dealer and Art Critic. All one needs is a keyboard and mouse to play it seems, not going to raise the eyebrows of young gamers, but teachers may be able to use it to engage their students in a different way. Tell me what you think after you check it out here at http://ttt-games.com:8080/ttt/art-game.html

ANN ARBOR: A2 Art Fair Goes Techie! 7/16-7/19

ArtServe MI has launched GIST, a new arts dialogue project which will allow people to text comments and share impressions of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair via the web. Get Gisting during the fair – sign up to follow and participate via Twitter (http://twitter.com/gistter) and contribute content (images, videos, text, audio, etc) to the blog (http://gistter.blogspot.com/). ArtServe MI's mobile messengers will walk the site on the hunt for hot activities. Located alongside the New Art New Artists tent, Gist will be onsite each day from 10 am – 6:00 pm, so whether you are a technophobe or technophile there’s no excuse to not get Gisting. Michigan has an abundance of vibrant, diverse, and dynamic arts and cultural communities; Gist is one way to let everyone know about it. For more information, visit http://www.artfair.org/

RESOURCE: Staying Legal for Michigan Nonprofits

A one-stop shop for state and federal laws and regulations affecting Michigan nonprofits, great resource! http://www.stayinglegalmi.org/

DETROIT: Concert of Colors 7/17-7/20 FREE admission!

The Concert of Colors takes place July 17th-July 20th, 2008 and is metro Detroit’s free annual diversity music festival. It is presented by ACCESS/Arab American National Museum, New Detroit Inc. and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) with the goal of bringing together metro Detroit’s diverse communities and ethnic groups by presenting musical acts from around the world. Over its 15-year history, the festival has become a beloved highlight of metro Detroit’s summer festival season.

This year's Forum on Community, Culture, and Race entitled "The Rhythm That Beats In All of Us" takes on a different format in its third year focusing on drummers from the different ethnic communities in the Detroit area. The Forum opens at the Music Box in the Max M. Fisher Music Center, 3711 Woodward Avenue, in Detroit, on Friday morning, July 18, 2008.

ARTS ED: NEA invites MI team to Nat'l Conference

Arts/education conference invites team from Michigan
The National Endowment for the Arts has chosen a team of educational and cultural leaders from Michigan to participate in the second Education Leaders Institute in Chicago this week. The six-member team includes Steve Hamp, chairman of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan, and Cindy Ornstein, board member of Wixom-based ArtServe Michigan. The Michigan team will consider fundamental changes to how arts, creativity, culture and education in Michigan can better prepare students.

http://crainsdetroit.com/article/20080714/SUB/807140344/1076

ARTS ED: High School for the Recording Arts

I learned about the High School for Recording Arts program at a “HipHop inside K-12 Education” session at the Americans for the Arts conference in Philadelphia, PA last month. The program has had tremendous success with many students that other schools had either failed or given up on. Many of the students were dropouts before enrolling and the program now boasts incredible retention and graduation rates. The kids get access to professional equipment to produce their own projects and learn the business of the recording industry hands-on AS LONG as they are able to keep up a certain grade point average with their regular high school classes. This program is currently ongoing in Minnesota and in the session they mentioned that another location will be opening soon in NY. We need programs like this in MI!

DETROIT: White Stripes' White pens poem about Motor City

Singer-guitarist Jack White has penned a poem expressing his strong feelings for Detroit to clear up any misconceptions about how the White Stripes frontman feels about his hometown ...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080707/ap_en_mu/people_jack_white&printer=1;_ylt=ArnowErdTNe1UJJcDV0wVTQnHL8C