New Victory Theatre Receives 2013 Annenberg Grant

The Center for Arts Education is pleased to name The New Victory Theater as a recipient of a 2013 Leonore Annenberg School Fund Grant. The fund's support enables The New Victory Theater to partner with Brooklyn's PS 24K, The Dual Language School for International Studies, in a Performing Arts Laboratory Residency Project during the theater's 2013-2014 season. The New Victory Theater designed the grant-awarded residency with the hopes of helping the students build knowledge of theater arts, and develop vocabulary, syntax, oral and written expression.

"The New Victory is so excited to partner with PS 24K in a much deeper, engaging way next year, thanks to the award from The Leonore Annenberg School Fund Committee," says Courtney J. Boddie, Director of Education/School Engagement at The New Victory Theater. PS 24K is a pre-K to fifth grade elementary school in the immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and one of ten national public elementary school recipients of the Leonore Annenberg Scholarship, Fellowship and School Funds. Ms. Boddie adds, "Through the Performing Arts Laboratory Residency Project with PS 24K, The New Victory Theater will help students make academic and personal connections to the arts, and help teachers develop a sustainable foundation for art-form learning and arts integration across school culture."

Over the course of the semester, The New Victory will conduct more than 100 art-form-based learning sessions at PS 24K, sending New Victory Teaching Artists in teams of two for every residency class (and providing bi-lingual artists for work in dual language classrooms) to co-teach with the classroom instructors. After the Artists are acquainted with the culture of the classrooms in which they are working, the Artists and teachers will select a curricular area to emphasize, training PS 24K teachers to incorporate the performing arts into their lesson planning and teaching practice.
In this integrated arts education experience, PS 24K students will attend multiple live Theater Productions and create their own performing arts work inspired by the shows on the New Victory stage. The Performing Arts Laboratory Residency Project will culminate with a student sharing of their final performance pieces amongst their peers in the Residency.
The New Victory Theater and PS 24K have a shared belief that strong academic skills go hand in hand with the development of artistic competencies. To gauge the success of these residencies, the Performing Arts Laboratory Residency Project will conduct pre-project and post-project writing assignments aimed at assessing the impact of the theatrical experiences and workshops. At the semester's end, PS 24K hopes to see an improvement in student academic performance.