The Back Track to Art

College students, by any chance do you sometimes wonder what our fair state of Minnesota has to offer in the way of arts activities and experiences for young, arts curious people like you?

Well, wonder no more!

The Northfield Arts Guild has helped create a new state-wide program designed for the arts curious college student (i.e., you!). It’s called LINK.

link-flyer.pdf

Through Link, you can tap into a whole world of art in Minnesota. All you have to do is get a discounted student membership at any arts organization in Minnesota participating in LINK, and you’ll get member benefits at any other LINK organization.

To learn more, just stop by Northfield’s community art center–the Northfield Arts Guild–located at 301 Division Street in downtown Northfield. Or call us at (507) 645-8877, or email us at office(at)northfieldartsguild(dot)org.

This information just came over the transom. It sounds like these classes offer a fantastic opportunity for theater artists, and since there are many fabulous such people in Northfield this seemed like good information to pass along.

Introducing a new program at the Guthrie Theater - the Master Artist Series. This series of classes, workshops and seminars is presented especially for artists. It will feature the special skills and expertise of a wide range of national and international master artists working with the Guthrie throughout the coming seasons. We look forward to bringing you this informative and inspiring series!

We will begin the series this month with two workshops:

The Actor’s Process: Audition to Opening Night
With Peter Michael Goetz
Thursday, August 16
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Guthrie Theater – Level Eight
Fee: $20.00

Speaking the Language of Shakespeare
With Andrew Wade
Tuesday, August 21
1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Guthrie Theater – Level Eight
Fee: $30.00

You can register for these workshops online at http://www.guthrietheater.org/learn/classes/for_professional_artists
or by calling the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224.

With all the focus on and talk about Northfield’s youth of late, I thought I’d point out something about how the arts, and the integrative use of the arts in school curricula, can affect our kids in a positive way. According to this article from the Tucson Citizen, which is based on a Harvard study of a program called “Opening Minds through the Arts (OMA),” the arts help improve student skills in the “three R’s,” and the use of the arts in a school curriculum correlates to significantly higher test scores among students.

According to the article, the OMA program integrates instrumental music, opera, dance, theater and visual arts in the curriculum in teaching reading, writing, math and science to children in Tucson area grade schools. An arts integration specialist and a team of seven artists work alongside classroom teachers to adapt lessons to “support teaching of core skills and knowledge,” and the program employs a list of more than 50 Arizona artists to teach residency courses in the schools. The results of these efforts, according to the article, are clear across the board in terms of teacher, student, and parent satisfaction and increased student performance. Meaning, the arts are a forgotten key component in any effort to advance the education of our kids.

Now, before I go on, let me issue a PROPAGANDA ALERT. Warning: What you are about to read may be interpreted by some as a bit horn-tooty.

The Northfield Arts Guild has a long and proud history of involvement with the schools and students of Northfield–producing student theater, teaching classes to children, exhibiting student art work, and, in the past, organizing artist residencies for local schools. And, for the reasons listed above, we are dedicated to finding the means to expand these efforts.

With that in mind, we have been working these past few months to resurrect and expand the school artist residency program, which was lost in the Northfield school budget cuts of 2003, but to be honest it has been difficult thus far to find funding sources.

We will keep trying, though–for we at the Guild do believe in the power of the arts to make education, and the world, better.