L/A Arts’ Education Programs offer continuous, on-going programming in all Lewiston Auburn public schools, which affects nearly 10,000 young people every year, and works with other schools throughout the state on projects and programs as well as in an advisory capacity. Projects range from bringing artists into elementary schools for studio residencies to providing arts and curriculum related teacher workshops for all educators and administrators. The arts help influence students’ creative, cognitive, and social abilities. They can provide students with an outlet to develop creativity, fluency, originality, expression, imagination, risk-taking, and self-perception. At the heart of each Arts-in-Education program is a desire to build a community of life-long learners who realize the potential of the arts to understand, to express, to teach, and to enlighten.

L/A Arts’ 2009-2010 Arts-in-Education programming is made possible through a partnership with the Lewiston and Auburn School Departments. Our work with students is also funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Every school year, L/A Arts sponsors an Artist Residency in each elementary and middle school in Lewiston and Auburn. Through residency work in the classrooms, assemblies, and arts presentations, this program reaches approximately 5,000 students and 350 teachers. Residency and artist programs are designed by L/A Arts and school staff, based on curricular content and need at each school. Artists work with the classroom teacher in planning thematic connections to the curriculum and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching subject matter and social issues. Mediums such as dance, theatre, book-making, singing histories, painting, sculpture and museum education help engage students of all learning abilities and styles. Residencies often culminate in a demonstration of the process and product with school/parent presentations or peer performances.

Program Underwriter:

TD Charitable Foundation
The P&G Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Program Supporters:

DownEast Energy and Auburn-Lewiston Breakfast Rotary Club

Program Sponsors:

LePage Bakeries, Walmart, and Kiwanis Club of Auburn-Lewiston

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ArtsPass is an L/A Arts initiative that provides every high school student at Lewiston High School and Edward Little High School with the opportunity to attend each L/A Arts live performance, at no charge. An event may consist of dance, music, singing, or theatre; it may be in a cabaret setting or a more formal concert hall setting or stage. Through this program students have the opportunity to become familiar with a variety of performing arts, experience the process of attending an arts event, develop the habit of attending live performances, and learn how to be a respectful audience member.

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Developed for Lewiston Public Schools by L/A Arts

L/A Arts is pleased to present a series of five interactive workshops for educators focused on integrating techniques from a wide range of arts disciplines into the elementary classroom. The featured presenters are all Maine-based professional artists/teaching artists who will bring their most creative and engaging ideas in for teachers to try themselves and then take back to their students. These two-hour sessions will take place from 3:45PM - 5:45PM on either a Monday or Thursday afternoon in the Dingley Building and are open to Lewiston School Department Educators.

1. VISUAL ART/CREATIVE LITERACY with John Holdridge
        Monday, December 7, 2009

2. DANCE/MOVEMENT  with Karen Montanaro
       Monday, January 14, 2010

3. CREATIVE WRITING with Lynn Plourde
        Monday, February 8, 2010

4. MUSIC with Hans Indigo Spencer
        Thursday, March 11, 2010

5. THEATRE with Andrew Harris
        Monday, April 5, 2010

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In addition to our regular Arts in Education programs, L/A Arts strives each year to bring in "special events" for public and private school teachers, students and home schooled families. Ranging from drama and music performances to field trips to local arts organizations and institutions, these special projects offer another way for community members to experience the arts.

Special events are often tied to curriculum, but stress the importance of enjoying the arts for arts sake and for practicing and refining theatre and museum-going etiquette:

Special projects will appear here with links to a description as they are scheduled.

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Teachers/Adminstrators Evaluation Survey

Artists Evaluation Survey

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