This Year with ARTS Avenue

In the 2023-24 school year Arts Connection has continued with their program ARTS Avenue in serving youth K-12 in 17 different school sites. This year ARTS Avenue has brought on 19 different community teaching artists, a few of which have implemented new arts disciplines which weren’t offered in the past. The art work that the students had created this year was given the chance to be presented at an exhibition at the National Orange Show from April 17th-21st thanks to Scott Nelson and Gregg Usher from San Bernardino City Unified School District. We at Arts Connection are grateful to have been presented the opportunity to exhibit our students' work with Expanded Learning alongside those from the district's art show exhibition “Where the Community Blossoms”. Viewing the outstanding work that the student’s have created for the district art show has given us at Arts Connection hope for the future of arts and culture in our community. Megan Fowler-Hurst is a new dance instructor for this year and has worked closely with the elementary school students. Megan has brought in a fresh new perspective on how the students can present their work at this year's art show. The students had worked together to create and direct dance videos with Megan. The students were encouraged to make their own choreography and design the spaces they wanted to dance in as well as assisting Megan in the editing. Other community teaching artists such as Victoria McMinn and Daniel Whitfield had also done collaborative works with their students for this year's art show. Victoria got creative with using recycled materials and allowing her students at Lincoln Elementary and Newmark Elementary to create their own wind chimes which were named “The Swirl” and “Bouncy Fish”. Daniel taught illustration and comics to his students at Middle College High School and with that the students worked together to create hilarious comics such as “Batman the Musical”. With this comic the students were prompted to create their own idea of what they believed Batman would look like if it were to be a musical. In addition to this the students thought it would be fun to incorporate their Youth Leader Kyle, so every student incorporated Kyle into their musical. ARTS Avenue has become a way where our students have a safe space to express themselves and have fun. This year's work has really proved how innovative our students can be when offered the materials and opportunities to create. We only hope that next school year can be just as successful.