Beck Center for the Arts has been awarded a $15,000 grant from the PNC Foundation to provide early childhood arts education programming for preschoolers enrolled in the Head Start Program through West Side Ecumenical Ministry. PNC provided the funding as part of Grow Up Great, its 10-year, $100 million initiative to improve early childhood education.
"The Beck Center is well respected for providing quality artistic programming to thousands of local preschool children each year, instilling in them the joy of music, dance, theater, and visual arts at an early age," said Paul Clark, PNC regional president, Northeast Ohio. "This in turn helps create stronger, smarter and healthier children. Through PNC Grow Up Great, we are working with organizations such as Beck to help prepare our local children for success in school and life."
The grant from the PNC Foundation, which receives its principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., will allow the Beck Center to offer a weekly arts experience involving over 130 Head Start students ages 3 and 4 over a 10-week period. Programming, covering all of the major arts disciplines - dance, music, theater, and visual arts, begins in May and continues through the next school year.
"We are grateful to PNC for believing in our programming," said Ed Gallagher, MT-BC, Beck Center's director of education & creative arts therapies, who will oversee the project. "Our experienced staff will bring all four art forms into the classroom with the goal of expanding students' artistic opportunities while also providing in-service training for teachers," explained Gallagher. "A cornerstone of the program," he added, "will be providing valuable resources - instructional aids, expertise and materials - for the teachers to use after the program has ended so they may continue to provide quality arts instruction in the classroom."
To learn more about the PNC Grow Up Great initiative, go to
www.pncgrowupgreat.com.
The Beck Center is also collaborating with Lakewood Hospital's Child Care Center for a "teacher training" day on June 28 that will feature instruction from Lisa Gallagher, music therapy program manager for the Arts & Medicine Institute at The Cleveland Clinic, as well as three 60-minute sessions in music, theater and visual art. Nearly 100 early childhood educators are expected to attend the event.
Located at 17801 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, the Beck Center for the Arts is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization that offers professional theater productions, arts education programming in dance, music, theater, visual arts, early childhood, and creative arts therapies for special needs students, and gallery exhibits featuring regional artists. For more information, visit
www.beckcenter.org or call 216.521.2540 x10.
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