Arts Education

— Donald Davis, Storyteller

The most important contribution of the arts to education is the ability to improve the way we teach and learn....here's why:

• the arts inspire self-confidence and help keep kids interested in school.
• the arts help kids develop critical skills for life and work.
• the arts improve student performance in other subject areas.
• the arts expose kids to a range of cultures and points of view.
• the arts reach hard-to-reach students.

This season Performances To Grow On will continue to offer an arts education program to the students of Ventura County. We will be offering Adventures in the Performing Arts, a series of performances presented to students during the school day at theaters throughout Ventura County that includes nationally known performers representing the disciplines of theater, dance, music, puppetry and storytelling. In addition, PTGO will be offering the very successful "Assemblies At Your School" program which brings many performers directly into schools for up close experiences in the arts. Including these programs as part of Performances To Grow On is an integral part of our overall mission of reaching youth and exposing them to the joy of live performance. My friend Donald Davis, a storyteller from North Carolina, said it very beautifully:

"Art in Education is not about creating future artists. Rather Art in Education is about enabling dream-making to happen in all students.

When a student meets a practicing artist, their vision of the worldsuddenly becomes bigger than the walls of the room in which theysleep each night. Now, they have new material for dreaming.

Nothing is ever achieved without its being dreamed about first. Unless we give students huge experiences for dream building, theirachievements in both academia and personal life can do nothing butreplicate the lives they are already living.

Art makes life larger than life so that life itself can become larger than it would become any other way. I have seen this happen over and over again and again with studentsafter school performances."

We hope you will take advantage of the artful opportunities listed on these pages to make learning rich and relevant.

Performances

Let Our Stage be Your Classroom! There is nothing quite like the performing arts to stir the imaginations and elicit critical thinking skills in students. For a list of performances available to school groups, go to Adventures in the Performing Arts for theatre field trips in Ventura County and School Assemblies for shows that can be brought to your school.

Chatham Baroque from Pittsburgh poses with student musicians from Lupin Hill elementary school
in Agoura after an outreach performance presented by PTGO.
Maybe some of these kids will be inspired to become professional musicians.