The Beach Haven School has been selected as one of six schools out of 18 that applied to win a $9,000 NRG Creatively Green Family Arts Festival from Young Audiences New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The grant will allow the school to host a family event for up to 300 people featuring Young Audience artists “that will celebrate imagination and creativity while promoting a better understanding of individual and community responsibility to protect our planet,” a press release stated.
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| Photo by Ryan Johnson The students participated in a June play, led by Young Audiences, with a previous $10,000 Sandy Relief Arts Education grant. |
The two-hour festival at the Beach Haven School is set for April 23, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
“All community members will be welcome, and we will also be kicking off a Community Arts Project to celebrate Beach Haven’s 125th birthday that night,” EvaMarie Raleigh, Beach Haven School superintendent, told The SandPaper in an email.
The school students began incorporating ecology into their studies via an “arts-infused, cross-curricular, thematic approach” in September. The activities have helped them learn “about the importance of keeping the local environment free of pollutants and how personal activities impact their ecosystem,” Raleigh noted. So far they have met with “over a dozen” visiting artists and have taken part in many assemblies offered by “local community members and environmental agencies, all who have exposed our students to the inter-connection of the local ecology and the arts.”
“They are dedicating themselves to becoming the ‘stewards of change’ on the Island and to spread their knowledge and ideas with the greater community,” Raleigh said. ”The NRG Creatively Green Family Arts Festival will be the culmination of integrating 21st-century skills (4 C’s) into student learning. The students will ‘communicate’ their ‘creativity’ and ‘critical thinking’ by ‘collaborating’ with one another, family members and the larger community. They are true environmentalists, and their goal is sustainability.”
According to the press release, the festival will consist of a “dynamic performance by a Young Audience artist focusing on the importance of protecting our environment; hands-on art-making workshops led by Young Audiences’ professional teaching artists that promote environmental sustainability; and a community art-making project to be played, displayed or shared during the event.”
A regional arts-in-education resource, Young Audiences annually provides high-quality performances and artist-in-residence programs to nearly 500,000 children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
One of the largest solar power developers in the country, NRG develops “cleaner and smarter energy choices” for its customers. The company is known for building the first privately funded electric-vehicle charging infrastructure and also for giving customers the “latest smart energy solutions to better manage their energy use.”
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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