Arts @ Large Grows Great Gardens With 53rd St. School, March 2011
This spring, Arts @ Large will kick off its “Growing Great Gardens” or “3G” project with 53rd Street School.
Pending approval by Milwaukee Public Schools Facilities and Maintenance Department, the project will see local artists help 53rd St. School design and create their own garden on school grounds. The initiative is not only a way to bring a community garden to a local urban school, but also a way to teach environmental responsibility to the students.
The idea originated when freelance artist and gardener Melissa Tasjian partnered with local organizations to create the Bay View Hide House Community Garden, last summer. A Garden Beautification Day was held in September. A@L’s summer program at Tippecanoe School for the Arts and Humanities was one of many partners, along with Home Depot and Don’s Greenhouse of Fredonia, that offered its time and services to the garden in an effort to liven up the community attraction.
Tasjian will again team up with Environmental Science Artist Educator Sean Kiebzak, one of the artists who worked on the Bay View Hide House Garden project, to not only create fencing for the garden but also build Aldo Leopold benches for a place to relax while in the garden. Students will wood burn pledges to the earth onto the benches as an inspirational call to going green.
Tasjian is hoping to pick up right where she left off with the Bay View Garden, which earned a nomination by the Shepherd Express for the 2010 Urban Farm of the Year, at 53rd St. School.
“Arts @ Large provided the artistic perspective into that project, they helped to make it beautiful” said Tasjian referring to last year’s initiative, “and now I’m excited to bring all
those pieces back together for this project and work with students again”. Norwood Neighborhood Group and Sherman Park Community Association are also participating in the collaboration.
Artists Muneer Bahauddeen and Meg Mastronianni also worked with students from
Tippecanoe school during the Bay View Garden project. Bahauddeen created tiles to
embed into benches and fence posts to install in the garden. Mastronianni, a biology and chemistry teacher, collaborated with Kiebzak to teach plant and insect biology through the project.
The students used plants and insects that they studied with Kiebzak and Mastroianni to create the array of images placed on the tiles. Arts @ Large is hoping to use this model and carry it into numerous schools, as a way for more schools to weave the arts through science and math curriculum and ultimately “go green.”
Kagel Students Perform in Washington D.C., January 2011
The Kagel Elementary School Drummers traveled to Washington D.C. to perform at the 2011 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Celebration, sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA), in January.
For the memorial celebration, the students performed a series of songs called the “Pass It On” Suite, which emphasized games and activities children engage in today, that were passed down from African ancestors.
The audience was shown, via the drumming and movement, the origins of jump-rope, double-dutch, patty cake and ground games like “jacks”, whose rhythmic roots are found in West Africa and were spread throughout the African Diaspora.
Yolanda Estante, Kagel’s Music Director/Instructor, and Dr. Cecil Austin started the Kagel Drummers, a percussion and dance ensemble of 4th and 5th graders. The students had to have enormous amounts of dedication, sacrificing some recess time in order to rehearse for the event.
“Thank you Arts @ Large. The Kagel Drummers are honored to have represented Milwaukee Public Schools on a national level and to salute Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” said Estante.