The Asheville Area Arts Council gives back about $30,000 annually to arts-in-education programming through grants and programming that support schools, students, teachers, teaching artists and enrich the broader community. The arts-in-education program consists of everything from building and supporting artist residencies and teacher professional development trainings, to developing a directory of teaching artists, to collaborating with the community to put on WORD.07, the first annual county-wide poetry slam for middle- and high-school students.
Randolph Learning Center Principal Gordon Grant shares, “[The] Arts Council residency helped us further our goal of making students think of school as a place that provides them with lots of good learning experiences, not punitive ones. … projects like this help us move the students’ perceptions of school of a place where they do things, rather than have things done to them.”
On Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. Jonas Gerard, internationally collected artist and local resident, invites the community to his studio at 240 Clingman Ave. to experience his gestural and spontaneous style of painting. The paintings made during this event will then be auctioned to benefit the AAAC’s arts-in-education grant programs. Info: susannehackett@ashevillearts.com or 258-0710, ext. 103. Membership in the AAAC supports arts-in-education funding and operational expenses.
