Hearst Foundation awards VSC $50K for the Learning in Art & Culture Program

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation will continue their support of VSC’s Learning Art and Culture Program (LACP) with a grant of $50,000.  The grant will help fund the program over the next three years. George Pearlman, VSC’s Executive Director, said “it really means a lot to have the Hearst Foundation on board with their support of the arts in Lamoille County.”

The VSC Learning in Art & Culture Program (LACP) began as a response to the loss of state funding for the arts in our local primary schools in 1992.  With the support of the Windham Foundation, the Randolph Hearst Foundation, the A.D. Henderson Foundation, the Canaday Family Charitable Trust, the Mergens Foundation, the Green Mountain Fund and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, it has since provided more than 200 JES students each year with weekly art instruction, making it possible for rural, predominantly low-income students to receive formal art instruction in the making and history of visual art. Program Coordinator and VSC staff artist Arista Alanis ensures that JES students are exposed to VSC’s international creative community by inviting artists-in-residence into the classroom to present their work and to offer hands-on instruction. 

Building on the innovation and success of this program, VSC has expanded its reach, offering creative revitalization residency fellowships to visual art and English teachers of Vermont who are interested in developing new creative curricula.  Over the school year following their VSC residencies, LACP Fellows work with VSC to structure activities that expose their students to VSC’s cultural and artistic resources. Thus far student follow-up activities have included creative writing workshops with VSC Visiting Writers, collaborative mural-painting workshops led by VSC staff and resident artists, VSC gallery and studio tours, Q & A sessions with VSC resident artists, and classroom presentations Rangoli (Indian sand-painting) with former staff artist Gowri Savoor.  For the majority of student participants, it’s the first time they’ve been to an art exhibition or had firsthand exposure to a professional artist.  Hearst’s support will help VSC continue to invest in Vermont’s teachers and to begin offering similar opportunities to teachers throughout the country.

After her VSC residency, LACP Fellow and Lamoille Union Middle School English teacher Tamra Higgins reflected, “So, what will I take to the classroom from this experience?...I’ll take the reminder that what motivates us to learn is what interests us—and there are as many interests as students in front of us every day in the classroom.  While we have to learn many different disciplines, we also have to have the chance to develop what it is that we find interesting, amazing and beautiful in the world.”