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We need wood and leaves, Mr. Tiger, doors, a ladder, Tiger's eyes and balloons so everyone can fly to the sun.
-Yonas, 5 yrs. Children's Studio School
[image alt text: marker (?) drawing (?) of pink and red over a "sea" of blue.]
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Children's Studio School LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS 387-5880
ADVISORY BOARD Robert Alexander Marion Barry Barbara Kres Beach Michael Botwinick Donald A Brown Kelsie Collie John Conyers David Eaton Marilyn Farley William Fitzgerald Jose Font Olga Hirshhorn Marta Istomin Rockne Krebs Abram Lerner Delano Lewis Ethelbert Miller Albert Nellum Andrew Young
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Jennifer Cover Ann DeVaughn Sam Gilliam James Hurd Laura Lester Marcia McDonell Reginald Petty Allie Ritzenberg Betty Vanik
OFFICERS
Jennifer Cover, Chair Marcia McDonell, President Anne DeVaughn, Secretary James Hurd, Treasurer
November 12, 1987
F.Y.I. [written in marker]
We would like to acknowledge, with our deepest appreciation, the importance of your personal contribution to Children's Studio School, and to make you aware of a situation that has placed the diversity of the School's community in danger.
This year has bee characterized by enormous cutbacks in government funding. Currently, forty children require full or partial scholarships. To maintain our commitment to the School's low-income families, we need your help urgently.
The 1987 Scholarship Fund is this year's singular fundraising request. $7,500 will cover the annual cost of one child attending our School. Please give your crucial support by contributing to one child's education. We are asking you to ensure that as our School continues to grow, our multieconomic and multicultural community will grow with us.
We invite you once again to visit the School and meet Damilola, Tope, Langston, Terefe, Jose and the other children, whom you affect most directly. It is through your contribution that you, like the children, give life to the School's goals and beliefs.
Sincerely,
Marcia [signature] Marcia McDonell President
[handwritten note] I'm sending you this F.Y.I. only. As you may know (from your messages), I've been trying to reach you. David - I need to talk to you in person about a major idea related to the future of this school. Please - Could you pos. come here?? If not, I'll come wherever! Muriall (?)
1525 Newton Street NW (16th and Newton Streets NW) Washington D.C. 20010
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CHILDREN'S STUDIO SCHOOL 1987
Children's Studio School continues its commitment to educating young children in and through the arts. Each day, throughout the year, a multicultural, multieconomic community of children experience the School's rich curriculum of visual art, music, dance, drama, creative writing, architecture and mathematics that is brought to life by a devoted faculty of artists/teachers and interns.
Our tenth year has been one of extensive programatic growth. Internally, we have expanded our program to include seven year olds and have begun an intensive accreditation process to further refine the School on every level. The Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools awarded us membership, citing:
"I came away from CSS impressed with the deep commitment to an arts-integrated approach to education and with many vivid impressions of happy, productive youngsters engaged in an exciting, spirited arts program."
Our outreach efforts included arts workshops for parents and community members; training workshops for teachers at other schools; and internships. This year our Internship Program has been strengthened by an increased number of participants from universities throughout the Northeast.
Working to cultivate our independence as an organization through increased foundation support, we were awarded a $25,000 challenge grant from the Eugene Meyer Foundation, $5,000 from the Hattie M. Strong Foundation, and a new grant, we expect, from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
This year was marked by the launching of the most important endeavor in the history of the School: the search for a new home. This effort is pressing because we are in imminent danger of losing a large portion of our space - three vital teaching studios. In looking for a new building we are addressing our future space needs to accommodate the School's growth and auxiliary programs.
Because we focused our energies on internal development and the building search this year, we did not hold our annual benefit. Look forward to our tenth benefit celebration in 1988!
Our other development goals for the coming year will include: kicking-off our 3-Year Capital Campaign and increasing our annual Giving Program and our Endowment Fund to support salaries and provide tuition assistance for our poor families.
We are always eager to spend time with people interested in Children's Studio School. Please feel free to give us a call to arrange a visit any time.
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CHILDREN'S STUDIO SCHOOL
Inspired by the belief that the arts are basic to human development, in 1977 the Children's Studio School embarked on a pioneer program to educate children through a fully arts-based curriculum. Local artists, employed as teachers, tested the hypothesis that children working in a daily arts curriculum develop exceptional abilities to think and act, analyze and interpret, perceive and express, and create and evaluate.
Today, that hypothesis has become a tradition. Each day throughout the year, ten artists/teachers trained in the School's aesthetic/conceptual approach, educate a multicultural community of young children in and through dance, drama, visual art, creative writing, music and architecture. The School's extensive curriculum challenges children to participate in the world around them -- to make sense of and act upon their perceptions. Through art-making, they come to know themselves, and attain a deeper understanding and greater appreciation of their own and other's cultures.
Children's Studio School recognizes that children between the ages of two and seven assimilate information from and about their environment at an immeasurable rate, forming a foundation for lifelong learning. In finding creative solutions to problems presented in all arts diciplines, children explore the world as artists and develop their own aesthetic interpretations. The children's creations are derived from their natural pallette of interests: big things, scary things, rough things, surprises, animals, water, their own bodies; and things they do best: running, climbing, dancing, constructing, destructing, painting, dreaming, touching, talking, acting... Learning becomes an integrated process of doing, sensing, feeling, and knowing -- empowering children to question, value and transform their environment.
Holding to the belief that Children's Studio School and Washington fortify each other, the School is as much involved in absorbing the community as it is in nurturing it. As a cultural collaborator, the School shares with the community the artistic expressions of rich young minds from diverse cultural backgrounds by opening its Gallery and studios to visitors; exhibiting throughout the city; and offering arts workshops for neighborhood children, parents and other community members.
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Recognized by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the National Association of Arts Education, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, and numerous artists, educators, and curators, Children's Studio School was selected for the first and only show of children's art at The Phillips Collection, ART FROM THE CHILDREN'S STUDIO SCHOOL. Last year [crossed out] In 1985 [hand-written, the School was awarded the prestigous Mayor's Art Award for extraordinary achievement in the arts and service to the community.
Recently the School was awarded a $25,000 Challenge Grant from the Meyer Foundation to develop its Architecture Program in collaboration with the National Building Museum. Through the museum, the School will be sharing its architecture curriculum with students throughout the metropolitan Washington D.C. area within the next two years; and, thereafter, with educators nationally.
Actively committed to the development of teaching excellence in the arts, the Children's Studio School Internship Program offers intensive on-site professional training in the arts and education fields. Coming from universities throughout the country, interns spend a semester working with master artists/teachers to develop personal teaching approaches which link their respective fields with the School's philosophy. Currently, the School is developing a joint program with the Washington D.C. Board of Education to provide workshops and on-site training in and through the arts for public school teachers. As a result of the growing interest and involvement of artists, art and museum educators and other professionals, Children's Studio School is fast becoming a national model for arts in education.
To ensure its perpetuity, Children's Studio School's twin goals are to acquire its own building, which would house additional teaching studios, studios for adult artists, an Arts Education Resource Library and enough space to accommodate an expanded program for children up to age twelve; and to develop its endowment. In order to maintain its cultural and economic diversity (currently 70% of the children are from low-income families), Children's Studio School depends upon broad-based support from private, public and corporate sources.
