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Our HistoryThe Corps legacy built from the ground up.Arts Corps begins.With the spirit of a revolutionary and $5,000 from selling her old Volvo, Lisa Fitzhugh finalized a business plan and founded Arts Corps in the spring of 2000. She had just spent a year battling breast cancer following a successful, decade-long career in politics. The recent turn of events had inspired deep reflection, bringing Lisa back to her childhood as the daughter of a professional artist. As she was pulled back towards her deeper artistic roots, Lisa realized she wanted to work with art and kids and with increasing certainty, she felt a calling towards arts education, a space and type of learning where children could discover and practice their creative capacities.  Photo © Susie Fitzhugh Lisa Fitzhugh founded Arts Corps in 2000 to fill the arts education gap in the greater Seattle area. Click here to learn more about Lisa's background and legacy. She and a friend Heidi Lasher began researching what was already available in the realm of arts education locally and recognized significant unmet needs both in and after school. Meanwhile, there were many local and regional community centers that weren't being used to capacity and a relatively untapped education resource in Seattle's thriving artistic and cultural community - professional artists who were also educators, or "teaching artists." This situation was ripe for an innovative solution: To connect these artists with kids who typically had the least access to creative learning opportunities, and to offer young people quality arts education opportunities for free through sustained partnerships with community centers and schools. All young people in King County and the world, after all, deserved the freedom to imagine and the courage to be, to "make art anyway" in spite of barriers to inspired learning. As Fitzhugh later put it, Arts Corps came into being to help students "understand their own possibility as a human." "If that doesn't happen on a personal level, then it won't happen in the world."  Photo © Susie Fitzhugh Arts Corps started with eight teaching artists, including founding members Tina LaPadula (pictured) and Lauren Atkinson. The staff operated Arts Corps from Lisa's house in the first year. Arts Corp's vision soon became a reality when it was joined by a cadre of eight dynamic teaching artists. Among the founding members were two of Arts Corps' current staffers, Tina LaPadula and Lauren Atkinson, experienced educators and artists who were responsible for shaping Arts Corps' educational philosophy of emergent curriculum. Others key to Arts Corps' development were Leslie Marble, who helped recruit teaching artists in the first few months, Amy Maguire, a teaching artist on staff who built relationships with program partners, and Charlotte Beall, who implemented evaluation activities for the organization. Late community activist Stephen Nadal also contributed enormously to the organization's development, helping to operate Arts Corps from Lisa's home in its first year. Arts Corps moves and grows.The movement began at six program partner sites, with teaching artists offering powerful learning experiences after school in theatre, visual arts, dance and music to young people in grades K-12. In the next several years, Arts Corps programs expanded by popular demand to include in-school residencies, workshops, professional development for teaching artists and trainings for in-school teachers.  Photo © Arts Corps Arts Corps' staff and teaching artists put their heads together at a 2005 fall retreat. By the end of the 2006-2007 school year, Arts Corps programming had grown to a faculty of 42 professional teaching artists modeling creative habits of mind to nearly 2,800 students at close to 40 program partner sites throughout King County. Arts Corps had become the largest and most comprehensive nonprofit arts education organization in the region. Meanwhile, Arts Corps was receiving local and national recognition from the City of Seattle, the National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning and Harvard University School of Education's graduate research wing, Project Zero. Between 2005 and 2007, the Corps spearheaded The Seattle Arts Education Consortium, which brought Arts Corps and six other arts education organizations together to improve program evaluation efforts, create a professional development program for the growing pool of teaching artists in the region and communicate the value of the historically undervalued arts education field. In the fall of 2007, the group released the region's most potent advocacy tool to date documenting the tremendous value of arts learning in and out of the school day: "Powerful Learning through the Arts." By the end of 2007, Arts Corps staff tallied 10, with the initial founding members Lauren Atkinson as manager of faculty development, Lisa Fitzhugh as founder and executive director and Tina LaPadula as education director. Founder Lisa Fitzhugh passes the torch onto Arts Corps' next generation of leadership.In 2008, Lisa Fitzhugh stepped down as executive director to pass the torch to the next generation of Arts Corps leadership. Many of its original founding members major investors and teaching artists remain to help lead the way to Arts Corps' next chapter. "Bringing this organization into being has been the most exhilarating, creative and demanding chapter of my life," says Lisa in reflection. "Through it, I have discovered my unwavering commitment to help transform education and bring powerful learning and discovery to all young people. All of the people I have connected with along the way have changed how I see the world in a very radical way."  Photo © Joan Swearingen Elizabeth Whitford, now Arts Corps' executive director, honors founder Lisa Fitzhugh at the 2008 Festa del Arte "Live at The Triple Door" fundraiser, and introduces the Brian Quist-produced film, "A Tribute to the Vision of Lisa Fitzhugh." In the summer of 2008, Elizabeth Whitford, Arts Corps' community investment director for two years, stepped into the role of executive director. "The incredible commitment and creativity of our students, teaching artist faculty, staff, board and supporters have built Arts Corps into a groundbreaking organization," says Elizabeth proudly. "I look forward to partnering with this supportive, dynamic community to continue our momentum." To read deeper into the Corps' history, please click on the following articles links:
"Arts Corps finds willing recruits in needy schools: Non-profit lets in the light of the arts"
"Lisa Fitzhugh: The Art of Survival"
"Creativity to their Art's Content"
"Arts Corps: A Phenomenal Success Story" |
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