Operating Support Grant
Operating Support Grant
We would like to use the funds to pay our program manager and instructors as well as to pay rent.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Moira Villiard: visual artist, cultural programming coordinator at American Indian Community Housing Organization; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Margaret Holmes: visual artist, poet, and former Children’s Theatre employee; Tammy Mattonen: visual artists, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Emily Swanson: arts administrator at Oldenburg Arts and Cultural Community; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Margaret Holmes: visual artist, poet, and former Children’s Theatre employee; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner.
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
During 2019/2020, the Music Resource Center (MRC) intends to provide area students from 6th-12th grade with access to a high quality, free after school music program that gives them the opportunity to explore their passion for music in a safe and engaging environment. We intend to: -increase attendance -increase time students spend at the MRC -increase diversity of students in the program -continue to reach out to at-risk youth at places such as Life House, Neighborhood Youth Services, Center for Changing Lives, Human Development Center, and the Steve O’Neil apartments -provide ample performance opportunities -support students in creating high quality recordings -continue to provide the high quality experience students expect -connect with the music departments at local universities The instructors, staff, and Board of the Armory Arts and Music Center (the MRC’s parent organization) are committed to the MRC’s mission: ‘To educate and inspire young people and, through music, equip them with life skills for the future. The Music Resource Center (MRC) program and its parent organization, the Armory Arts and Music Center (AAMC), are continually assessing, evaluating and seeking feedback to shape the program and achieve its goals. This happens at all levels of the organization including our instructors, our program manager (PM), the executive director (ED), the MRC Advisory Committee, and the AAMC Board. These evaluations take place at different intervals to effectively respond to input and needs. Discussion among the instructors and the PM occur on a weekly (or more frequent) basis, while the MRC Advisory Committee meets periodically to discuss larger issues, and the Board meets monthly for updates and to give input. The MRC currently utilizes three tools to gather information including: -Student registration packet (which includes the member application and interest survey); to understand each students background and goals -Daily sign-in sheet; to track attendance -End of year survey; to evaluate the overall effectiveness of the program Over the past several years, we have continued to commit to collecting accurate data. We find this to be very helpful in understanding the overall quality of the program, which our students and parents rated a five on a scale of 1-5. This year, we are continuing to improve measuring aspects of the program to verify that we are meeting our goals.
We track the Music Resource Center's attendance numbers by the school year. Below are the statistics for the 2018/2019 school year (with previous year comparisons in parenthesis). In many ways this was the best year of the MRC program. Unfortunately the MRC Program Manager lost the attendance sheets for 2019/2020 before all the data was entered. From the records we do have for the 2019/2020 year, attendance was down from previous years. For 2018/2019; 7.76 Students per day (5.39 in 2017/2018, 7.51 in 2016/2017, 5.67 in 2015/2016) 1.38 Hours per student per day (1.78 in 2017/2018, 1.69 in 2016/2017, 1.51 in 2015/2016) 10.72 Hours per day of student time (9.60 in 2017/2018, 12.68 in 2016/2017) There were 153 unique students that attended/visited the program in 2018/2019 (48 in 2017/2018, 56 in 2016/2017, 55 in 2015/2016) We also do an end of year survey. For the 2018/2019 school year we had 25 responses. The average rating for the MRC program was 4.8 on a scale of 1-5. No end of year survey was created for 2019/2020 due to the abrupt end to the year due to Covid.
Other,local or private