Each year, Victoria Theatre Association’s Education & Engagement team offers one or more in-depth education projects at no charge to participating students and teachers. Each project is built around a particular performance and theme and creates community engagement with the arts. Past projects, for example, have focused on the Holocaust, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, student leadership, diversity and freedom, immigration, and cyberbullying or have been created around productions such as Wicked, The Color Purple, and Disney’s The Lion King.
A typical project begins with hands-on workshops in the classroom followed by a critical writing or art project that explores key themes of the work in question and connects those themes to the students’ learning and lives. The project culminates with students’ attendance at the performance.
This year’s project, Footprints: How to Make Your Life Greener, is in association with our PNC Family Series production of THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS LIVE! This is a unique project, comprised of up to 10 special needs elementary classrooms from around the Miami Valley and addresses a need to educate our children about the best ways to reduce their carbon footprint on this earth. THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS LIVE! addresses issues of conservation, recycling and global warming and meets numerous Ohio Department of Education Academic Content Standards, including science, social studies, and mathematics. Participants will devise their own plans for reducing their carbon footprints in their own homes as well as work with local artists and educators to design a classroom visual art project that will be displayed at the Victoria Theatre during the run of THE MAGIC SCHOOL BUS LIVE! held March 24-25, 2012. Students will be able to attend the production with a parent, teacher or guardian to see their artwork on display. Winning art projects will receive a cash prize for their classroom to use however they wish.
For more information, please contact Education & Engagement Coordinator Mindy Wallace.
