Brooklyn Academy of Music
Program: Access to Arts
Area of Work: Arts
Grant Purpose: Education Programs
Overview
BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) is a multi-arts center located in Brooklyn. For more than 150 years, BAM has been the home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas—engaging both global and local communities in theater, dance, music, opera, film, and much more.
Grant
Purpose: To support BAM Education, which engages students, teachers, families, and learners of all ages through a diverse range of initiatives designed to encourage young people to embrace their vision, voice, and power as creative agents.
Offerings include in-school arts residencies for students; after-school workshops; school-time music and theater presentations for young audiences; weekend presentations for families; and programming tailored to serve youth with special needs.
Impact
During the 2020-21 school year, BAM’s in-school residency offerings and curriculum were delivered on Zoom due to the ongoing pandemic. In total, BAM’s in-school residencies served more than 225 students in 18 classes at eight Brooklyn schools. Programs included Word. Sound. Power. in the Classroom, a literacy residency program for high-school students; DanceAfrica in the Classroom, an in-school dance residency presented in conjunction with BAM’s annual DanceAfrica festival; and four intensive out-of-school initiatives designed to provide students with practical, in-depth learning opportunities in a diverse range of fields. The Arts & Justice after-school theater and creative writing workshop used theatrical and multidisciplinary performance techniques to encourage 24 high school students to explore identity and social equity issues; the fall cohort focused on the theme of “Gender, Sexism, and the Patriarchy,” while the spring cohort centered their work on the theme of “Equity.”
Photos by Marie Kon