2015-262-E Arts - Communities in Schools of OC Arts Grant

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DocuSign Envelope ID: 78F43652 -7587- 4842 - 8392- C1A386736DBE Proaosed Use of Grant Funds: The proposed use of the grant is to fund Graphic Artist/Photographer Laura Williams as a guest educator who will team up with CIS Music Educator and Developer, Max Puhala, to collaboratively develop and lead eight 1 -hour hands -on, cross - disciplinary arts lessons as part of the Bucket Drumming Ensemble afterschool curriculum for at -risk youth at each of the four CIS Orange afterschool programs in the district for Chapel Hill - Carrboro City Schools. Max Puhala is a Chapel Hill -based musician and former AmeriCorps member who currently directs the Bucket Drumming Ensemble afterschool program for CIS Orange, which takes place from 4:30 — 5:30pm three days a week for 15 days total at four middle schools in Orange County. He has written and taught the curriculum to over 200 at -risk students since September of 2014, and is working to diversity the 2015 -16 curriculum with cross - disciplinary guest lessons taught by Laura Williams. Laura Williams is an artist who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Vermont and is currently living in North Carolina, where she composes textural backgrounds greatly influenced by flora and fauna. The grant will support both Williams' artist fee to teach two guest lessons at each of the four schools during the 2015 -16 school year (a total of eight lessons), administrative expenses, and the purchase of graphite pencils and large pieces paper for the lessons. Puhala and Williams will collaboratively plan and teach each lesson, which will function as an extension of Puhala's music curriculum. The lessons will introduce the concept of "patterns" into the students' drumming, relating the musical and rhythmic percussion patterns they are learning to the visual patterns drawn by Williams and also to the patterns in their own lives. Students will listen to different drum sounds generated by Mr. Puhala and their peers, and will individually draw visual marks on paper to represent their response to the different sounds (loud, soft, aggressive, relaxed, etc.). The students will then compare their individual marks with their classmates, where certain patterns of marks will begin to emerge. These marks will come to create and represent a visual "language" of sound that the students will all know how to write and understand. Then, the students will break into groups and write down long sequences of these marks on paper, in effect visually composing a new musical piece from their own new visual language. Finally, the students will all reconvene to practice and perform their compositions together while reading from the "sheet music," written in their newly developed visual and musical language. In the 2015 -16 academic year, the CIS Orange Bucket Drumming Ensemble afterschool program will occur in Smith, Culbreth, McDougal, and Phillips Middle Schools. Williams' lessons will take place on days 3 and 4 of the 15 -day Bucket Drumming Ensemble curriculum and will further diversify the lessons, which already include North Carolina Essential Standards for Music, Science, Language Arts, and World History, Laura Williams' lessons will additionally include and teach NC standards for Visual Arts 6.V.2.2 "Use observation skills of the immediate environment to create visual imagery," 6.CX.2.2 "Understand the connections between art and other disciplines," and 7.V.2.3 "Create original art emphasizing selected elements and principles to express ideas or feelings."