Using bass drums made out of recycled tires from local shops, Beach Haven School students in fourth through sixth grades recently performed a musical presentation for their friends at Eagleswood Township Elementary School, whom they became acquainted with after Superstorm Sandy damage required them to attend the mainland school. The performance was offered as a special invitation to the Beach Haven School’s NRG Creatively Green Family Arts Festival on Thursday, April 23, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
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| Photo via Blogger The school students made various instruments out of recyclables. |
The festival, which “will celebrate imagination and creativity while promoting a better understanding of individual and community responsibility to protect our planet,” has been made possible through a $9,000 grant from Young Audiences New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The Beach Haven School was one of six schools selected out of 18 that applied.
The festival is free and open to all community members. Attendees will have a chance to participate in various hands-on art-making workshops that promote environmental sustainability, led by Young Audiences’ professional teaching artists. Beach Haven School students will provide some improvisation with the Junk Jam Band throughout the night and also complete a mosaic surfboard project.
As part of the festival, a community-wide surfboard project will be offered at the school throughout the summer, and the finished product will be donated to the town.
To better learn about the importance of keeping the local environment free of pollutants and how personal activities impact the local ecosystem, the Beach Haven students began incorporating ecology into their studies via an “arts-infused, cross-curricular, thematic approach” in September, Superintendent EvaMarie Raleigh said.
To prepare the students for their performances, Toni Dworkin, the school’s music teacher, began teaching them how to use recycled materials to make instruments, including shakers, guitars and drums. The fourth- through sixth-grade students used packing tape and experimented with different wrapping patterns to create a good drum head for their tires. They then decorated them with tape, stickers, tissue paper and whatever else they could bring in. By then experimenting with different activities, the students learned how the various materials affect the drum sound.
“Through the improvisation activities, the students were able to apply their rhythmic and musical notation knowledge, be creative, express themselves and learn how improvisation is used in jazz, dance, theater and other art forms,” Dworkin said.
The students will begin creating their own performance by incorporating everything they have learned, including movement knowledge they gained from Young Audiences. The performance will be held at the school’s spring concert on May 21, at 7 p.m.
— Kelley Anne Essinger
This article was published in The SandPaper.
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