Kids: The Heart of the Arts

Summer Theater and Art Program

Nominated for the 1999 Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News Award for Excellence in Theater Education and Servive through the Barrymore Awards.

June and July

The Kids: Heart of the Arts program exposes students from five to fourteen to the wonders of the performing arts and the connections between them. The program runs from 8:30 AM until 1 PM each weekday. The program usually runs daily from the last Monday in June to the last Friday in July. Each student rotates through an age based four-class schedule. The program seems to expand its artistic vision each year without losing sight of its basic theatrical vision. The program is focused on all areas of the arts, and although performance is an ultimate theatrical goal, Kids: the Heart of the Arts is not designed to prepare its students for a single performance. Instead the students work on developing and exploring their ideas. We focus on process not product. Students should experience the arts not attempt to make specific art works. Each day begins with a brief full group warm up. Our oldest group, lovingly called the Bigs, each student leads one session of the warm up. Students from our two oldest groups, from 11 to 14, will be running lights and sound for the final performance as will be exposed to the use of a digital lighting board and state of the art ETC instruments, which they will focus for the performance.

The students write plays, learn the value of improvisation in the theater, experience music performance and composition, enjoy the dance component and participate in acting classes. This is an integrated program with all the arts interacting with each other. The program has a final showcase but there is no focus on the end result, instead we guide the students toward an understanding of the work rather than the applause. The building of community of artists and the collaborative nature of the artistic process are the specific goals of the program. As always our program includes some visiting guest who produce workshops for the students. We have had a professional violinist who shared her music along with technical innovation like looping sound to create music with our students and staff. We have had an illusionist and a comic book inker. There was a day of candy making where the students made candy and then shaped it as sculpture into logs and roses. This mixed the basics of sculpture presented in the art classes with an unusual vision of that work. Again the candy making focused on creation since every one of the candy creations were eaten. The students invade the campus of the Montgomery County Court House to share their art. They use sidewalk chalk to create huge murals and bizarre graffiti all over the Court House property. The students perform their improvisation scenes and musical compositions for passers by. The program has spawned a full year program. There are four eight-week sessions for students in acting, specifically improvisation and creative dramatics. The program draws students from the Montgomery and Delaware County area from all racial and socioeconomic groups (30% minority). There is no audition process and the program is kept small to allow attention to the children's artistic and social needs. In our oldest group, 60% of the students have been with the program since its inception. The program has a high rate of return and we have been forced to increase the overall program size to include both the new students and our returnees. The teacher student ration on any given day is 10 to 1. Students pay a low tuition to be a part of the program and each year we offer scholarships to 20% of the attendees

Click here For a detailed description of the program.

Click here For a detailed description of the 2001 program.

For information and registration call: (610) 279-1013

The staff has made a conscious effort to keep the class size and therefore the program size down. The intimacy of last year’s experience was very important to its success. The classes are more like an child's encounter with the arts and not a regular school classroom.
We also have made the decision to add several specialty teachers. Each week a special area will be presented to give the students an exposure to a variety of alternative artistic pursuits. These areas include stage combat, mime, juggling, paper making, and magic.
Students will also enjoy classes in music, dance and stage technology.Each of these areas will be covered in a practical survey format but may allow the student to choose an area of interest of discover a skill they never knew they had. These special teachers will be blended with the special presenter program already in place which exposed the students to basic stage lighting, makeup, music, puppetry and dance.

Read Past programs from Kids: Heart of the Arts
Meet the staff of Kids: Heart of the Arts
For information and registration call: (610) 279-1013.

The staff has also restructured the course time so that each student would have a more consistent schedule and that all teacher’s needs were met.
The program will continue its visits to the county seat court house and the surrounding community. We plan to add an extra day on the streets of Norristown to do even more street theater and graffiti artwork. Return the Montgomery County Cultural Center Main Page