Creative Support for Organizations-Round 1
Creative Support for Organizations-Round 1
The Minnesota Guitar Society will support guitar classes at four K-12 public schools in the Twin Cities with teaching artists, visiting concert artists and materials, and will relaunch the annual Youth Guitarathon.
Peggy Burnet: entrepreneur, art collector, and community volunteer; Uri Camarena: director of business consulting with Metroplitan Economic Development Association (MEDA); Michael Charron: arts educator and an arts and civic leader; Richard Cohen: attorney in private practice and a former state legislator; Sean Dowse: arts advocate, arts practitioner, and civic leader; Emily Galusha, arts and civic leader, former arts administrator; Anthony Gardner: vice president, marketing and communications at CentraCare; Philip McKenzie: team lead with Boutique Air, founder and owner of Bluedoor 74, adjunct college faculty; Mary McReynolds-Pellinen: executive director, Lyric Center for the Arts; Dobson West: retired attorney; Christina Widdess: nonprofit consultant; former managing director, Penumbra Theatre
Terrell Beaudry is the founder and president of SOAR Regional Arts based in Saint Michael. In addition to SOAR, Beaudry is the director of choral music at the Anoka Middle School for the Arts, and director of Music at St. Victoria Catholic Church.; Karlyn Berg graduated from Rhode Island School of Design, obtaining a BFA in painting and graduate printmaking studies at Pratt University. She is a working artist using acrylics, printmaking and collage and she teaches art workshops. In 2017 and 2020 and 2021 she was awarded a Minnesota States Arts Board grants and from The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council in 2018 and 2019 and 2021. She is the administrative assistant at the Edge Center for the Arts in Bigfork, Minnesota. She also is a ISD 318 Community Education Coordinator, and a volunteer dog scentwork trainer for The Iron Rang Dog Training Club.; Megan Krueger is currently the development manager at Every Meal in Roseville. She has worked at several arts organizations including Steppingstone Theatre and Stages Theatre Company. She graduated with a BA in both English literature and theater from Viterbo University (La Crosse, WI).; Angela McDowell is creator of Alleyway Arts & Herbs, LLC, which promotes scholarship and mindfulness through helping people to the realization of art as omnipresent using creative, nonmedical therapy solutions. Alleyway Teas and merchandise are sold locally in Minnesota. McDowell was student counselor at ECMC, a nonprofit, and taught locally at Folwell Performing Arts Magnet.; Gregory Wilkins works at Minnesota State University Mankato as the associate director of the Centennial Student Union and student activities and is a working artist. He served on the Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council for six years, and currently serves an elected two-year term as a curatorial panelist for Minneapolis Institute of Art?s Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program. In 2020, he served as a Poetry Out Loud judge with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. He formerly served as the director?s assistant, external affairs at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC).
ACHF Arts Education
We will work with 120 students in guitar classes at four schools and 60 in our Youth Guitarathon to increase their musical, social, and academic skills. We will interview (or contact by email) all teachers of participating students at the end of the project, and will hold regular meetings with our team of teaching artists throughout the project, to assess student gains and responses.
Our teaching artists worked with over 100 high school students. Our Youth Guitarathon involved twenty young guitarists from throughout the metro area. The managing director met one-on-one with our GIOS teachers and the teachers at our partnering schools at the beginning, mid-point, and conclusion of the school year (the length of this project) to get feedback and plan for the 2023-24 school year.