Mark DeGarmo Dance Receives Grant From The NEA

Mark DeGarmo Dance has been awarded a highly competitive, peer-reviewed national Grant for Arts Projects to support its Partnerships in Literacy through Dance and Creativity© program. Mark DeGarmo Dance's project is among the more than 1,100 projects across America totaling nearly $27 million that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2021 funding.

"As the country and the arts sector begin to imagine returning to a post-pandemic world, the National Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce funding that will help arts organizations such as Mark DeGarmo Dance reengage fully with partners and audiences," said NEA Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. "Although the arts have sustained many during the pandemic, the chance to gather with one another and share arts experiences is its own necessity and pleasure."

Partnerships in Literacy through Dance and Creativity© is MDD's "evidence-based" seven-year interdisciplinary education program that empowers under-resourced, disenfranchised, and often overlooked New York City BIPOC, Black Indigenous People of Color, elementary students from pre-kindergarten to grade five to use dance, movement and creative writing as lifelong tools to fulfill their highest potential. A 2018 published study is the first research in the scientific literature of an embodied cognition program sustained over many years with New York City BIPOC public school students.

Conducted by Johns Hopkins University, it indicated "promising evidence" that MDD's fourth grade students' state reading scores increased by "a statistically significant amount." An embodied cognition approach to enhancing reading achievement in New York City public schools: Promising evidence

For more information on Mark DeGarmo Dance's dance and literacy education program, visit www.markdegarmodance.org/education/.