The Mettawee Community School visits the Arts Center

Chester Andover Elementary School made kites with art teacher Elaine Reed with an Outreach Grant from SVAC

2005 Burr & Burton SVAC Scholarship winners: (l to r) Aubrey Edson, Harriet Miller Award; Alex Gray, Churchill Ettinger Award; Ali Tron, Thomas Reilly Dibble Award

SVAC Executive Director Christopher Madkour and past Board Member Lee Fegelman with staff and students from MEMS

Local art teachers and their children at SVAC
Chinese artist, poet, scholar and teacher, Yinglei Zhang, at the Maple Street School
Outreach Programs
Established in 1995 by Executive Director, Christopher Madkour, SVAC’s Outreach Program annually facilitates a host of interdisciplinary arts initiatives, both on campus and off. Generously underwritten by the Vermont Country Store, Barbara Riley, Doug and Kathleen Mariboe, Signa Read and others, Outreach, through its many guises, has become the public face of the Arts Center’s core mission, "to make both the visual and performing arts an integral part of the life of our community…"

The Jonathan Levin Educational Endowment Fund, offered each year by SVAC donor Barbara Riley, provides Outreach grants to public and independent schools across southern Vermont. Schools apply for funding, above and beyond their limited budgets, to facilitate programs, performances or courses of study that will, in tangible ways, advance their students’ knowledge and understanding of some branch of "The Arts." Madkour, the Outreach Committee, SVAC Member Artists and area arts educators vet the submissions.

Another significant Outreach Program, begun by SVAC Trustee Mary Gerster, is Looking at Art. Nine area elementary schools took advantage of this free art education program which, this year, focused on American painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

This year, eleven schools received a total of $6,750 in grant dollars for programs that reached more than 1,500 students in grades pre-K through high school.

2007-2008 Recipients:
Arlington Area Childcare, Arlington

Happy Days Playschool’s grant funded an Arts Enrichment Program including a residency from Circus Smirkus, and programs in folk dancing, animation, creative movement and drumming.

Fisher Elementary School, Arlington
"The Beat of Arlington," a week long residency with Otha Day, in which students studied different drumming rhythms and concepts, in-depth the history and cultures of both Japanese Taiko and African drumming, and presented a free community performance.

Chester Andover Elementary School, Chester
The school used this grant to publish "Our Book of Advice from Little People to Big People." This book provides a permanent record of the children’s creative images and thoughts and will be used to promote the arts within their community.

Currier Memorial School, Danby
The students were treated to 10 afternoon sessions of Japanese Taiko drumming, drum making activities, and a whole school drumming performance.

Flood Brook Union School, Londonderry

Local potter Susan Leader worked with the 280 students of Flood Brook during a one-week intensive pottery residency.

Long Trail School, Dorset
John Pitcher, local naturalist-artist, introduced students to nature journaling, observation drawing and showed how the sketchbook could be used to develop finished pieces of art.

Maple Street School, Manchester Center
Vermont Artist Sabra Field spent a one-week residency to introduce the art of block printing to students.

Mountain School at Winhall, Bondville
Continuation of the Opus Project, an arts integration program that melds visual and performing arts with the classic academic courses in a specific semester-long multidisciplinary study.

Northshire Day School, Manchester Center
Used to fund a weekly music and movement program, Music Together, with their toddler group.

Rutland City NE Primary School, Rutland

Students worked with artist-in-residence Candy Barr to create a series of theme-based murals for permanent display in their school.

Rutland SW Supervisory Union Schools: Tinmouth, Wells and Middletown Springs
These schools each benefited from a full-day visit from artist Jane Davies, who instructed the children on different ceramic glazing techniques.