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Grassroots Grant

The Grassroots Arts Program (GAP) provides per capita-based funding for arts programming to all 100 counties across North Carolina ensuring opportunities for citizens to experience the arts in their own communities. Grassroots funds are typically awarded to local arts councils.

Grassroots funds are distributed to Davie County Schools as a Provisional County Partner. In counties without a Designated County Partner, the N.C. Arts Council has selected an organization to serve as the Provisional County Partner (PCP) to oversee the distribution and management of Grassroots funds on a temporary (year-to-year) basis.

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Jamal Walton: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Accomplished Comic Artist, L. Jamal Walton, visited South Davie and North Davie Middle Schools for several days where our students received a ‘Crash Course in Comics’!  He worked with 260 students during our 3rd grading period.  His abundant library of hands-on resources/comics and his user-friendly handouts created a very engaging learning experience for the children.  We began his comic crash course by examining comics and identifying how the storylines were created.  We studied illustrations and text techniques and discussed why certain words and storylines were more effective than others.  Students created comics in collaboration with their peers and shared their comics with everyone.  Mr. Walton took the time to give helpful feedback to each group and the children were inspired by his own personal comics.  He discussed how he has built his career as an artist and showed the children several books that he has published.  This experience was aligned with our ELA Standards and it highlighted skills and concepts that they are currently learning.   At our annual Arts Smart Festival, we exhibited several student comic sketches and photographs from our experience with Mr. Walton.  This opportunity was insightful and a great way to show our students how a local North Carolina Artist is prospering creatively within the community!

Comic Artist Jamal Walton works with students

Comic Artist Jamal Walton works with students on their comics.

Students research comics to get ideas for their projects.

Comic Artist Jamal Walton works with students

Comic Artist Jamal Walton works with students researching comics

Students take crash course in Comics

Students work to complete their comics.

Leni Newell: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Leni and Kip Newell met with Mrs. Ledbetter, Ms. Swisher, John Marshall and Mr. Pruitt prior to their residency to determine a design and color scheme for the banner installation.  Leni took our input and ideas and came to the residency with a design plan.  During the residency, intermediate students along with Leni and Kip made 9 banners that will be installed at DHS in the cafeteria near the gym summer of 2024.  Students rotated in and out of the banner production space in small groups to give them more one-on-one time with Leni and the banners.  Students participated in all steps of producing these 9 6’x4’ banners.  These steps involved dying, stamping with dye and acrylic paints, masking, and cleaning chalk-off design.  Teachers and staff were also invited to be a part of the process by stamping a time or two to contribute.

RhinoLeap: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

The middle and high school theater arts students worked with RhinoLeap Productions with puppetry. The entire process of creating and manipulating the puppets kept students engaged and the ability for students to explore personal choices was exciting. The best part was the development of the characters students created, whether it was through the puppet’s names and personalities, the scenarios that they put their puppets in, or the movement choices they made when manipulating their puppets to perform in the Puppet Olympics. This week was a wonderful experience.

Nick Bradley: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

 

Nick Bradley worked with summer Davie County High School Students to create a mosaic out of Rubik's cubes to be displayed in the hallway of Davie County High School.  This 750-cube piece war eagle logo was designed by Nick and students, with Nick's help, spun the 750 Rubik’s cubes to the design needed for the piece.  Nick shared how he rendered the design and mapped out where each Rubik's cube was placed to show the image.  A video was created with different students and staff posing in front of the pieces as they were placed into the frame.  Nick will continue to create other designs for Davie County Schools and the design of the war eagle can be changed over time.

Sean Glover: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Sean previously co-owned an art museum in Charlotte with his brother and is a parent at Cornatzer Elementary School.  He worked for 2 weeks with both elementary students and high school students to create a centerpiece of canvases and several murals for Cornatzer's media center.  Elementary students worked alongside Sean and the high school students to help create the canvases, while high school students worked with Sean on several murals around the media center. This collaborative project aims to foster a vibrant, welcoming environment that supports creativity and relaxation.

Senora Lynch: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Senora Lynch is nationally known for her creation of exquisite American Indian handmade pottery. She creates each piece using a traditional hand-coiling method out of red and white clay, while adding a contemporary twist with her own style of etching designs into the surface.

“The spirit of clay has always inspired me. Working in clay takes me back to my childhood days of playing in mud, a free spirit.”

Senora became interested in making pottery at age fourteen after having been previously shown ancient pottery shards and assisting with a pottery class for her Haliwa-Saponi tribal elders. She also weaved chair bottoms alongside her mother and grandfather, learned to do beadwork, and started making American Indian regalia.  Years later, her passion transformed into a business that she named “Living Traditions” because the designs on her pottery are full of living traditional stories and beliefs of her people. The designs come through the Night Sky and are revealed to her in her dreams. She uses many American Indian symbols and motifs found in the natural environment, including bowls, turtles, lizards, maidens, smudge bowls, wedding vases, bears, which work in unison to convey the story being told on that piece of pottery. Senora’s pottery has evolved to include different shapes, including bowls, turtles, lizards, maidens, smudge bowls, wedding vases, bears, and plaques, among others. During her time with us, students studied Turtles and the way in which a turtle shell reflects the 13 moon cycles.  The shell is used as a calendar in Native Culture.   The student’s created clay turtles that also were a reflection of vitality, endurance and our connection to nature.  We also learned about how special clay is from North Carolina! 

Carol Krueger: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Carol Krueger provided a workshop on music literacy and helped students to better understand the link between music literacy and English literacy. What they learn in their music classes is another language. They learn the musical alphabet, A-B-C-D-E-F-G, they have “vocabulary words” which are small patterns of the pitches in a musical scale (Do-re-mi), and when you put those small patterns of pitches (vocabulary words) together, you get a “sentence” or a musical phrase.  The way we teach music literacy is the exact same way that we teach a language; sound before sight before theory. It was extremely helpful to our students to understand the “why” behind what they learn in their chorus and music classes. Carol also traveled around Davie County Schools and did lessons with all three levels, elementary, middle and high school. She sat in and assisted on an elementary Choir rehearsal at Shady Grove Elementary, she worked with both of our Middle Schools in both the general music and choir classrooms, and she worked with all choir classes at the High School. Carol's focus is on music literacy in the classroom. She believes in making students independent musicians through teaching them to connect the sounds they know to what is written on the page in front of them. 

Dante Webb, Libby Brown, Julianna Hayward: 2023 - 2024 Artist in Residency

Dante, Libby, and Julianna spent time working with chorus students on their concert repertoire. During their residency, each artist used their specialized skill to work vocally with the students in both a group and individual setting. Libby Brown is a retired choir director that is very active in helping choirs prepare for performance adjudications. Libby came and worked with our beginning level choir students and our auditioned choir and helped them in their preparation for the North Carolina Music Performance Adjudication (MPA). Julianna is an active pianist in the area, previously serving on the faculty at Wingate University. Dr. Hayward came to work with our students at the high school twice this year as a collaborative pianist for the choir’s MPA and May Concert. She worked with students on the understanding of how their part fit with what she was playing underneath them. Dr. Webb is a new member of the Wingate University faculty, and was kind enough to come do a workshop with our students at the high school in preparation for MPA. He worked with both the beginning choir and the advanced choir.

Dr. Webb and High School Chorus Students

Dr. Webb with Mrs. Darst's Class

Brian Childers works with elementary students using handbells.

Brian Childers: 2023-2024 Artist in Residency

Brian is a well-known handbell conductor and composer. He came to Davie County in April to work with all levels of students from Pre-K to high school. He rang chimes with our Pre-K students (2 & 3 yr. old), elementary, and middle school students, and directed the auditioned bell choir at the high school. He was in residence for three days. 

Steve Campbell & Dancing Drums : 2023 -2024 Artist in Residency

Steve Campbell spent the day engaging every student in the school with his drum circle!  Assemblies at all 6 elementary schools were about 45-50 minutes long and were done by grade level in the gym.  Every student got to play every instrument through a circle drum rotation.  Instruments included Djembes, Tick Tock blocks, bongos, maracas, and wood drum boxes.  The focus was on rhythmic patterns and teamwork.  Steve offered two different programs, World Drumming and Character Building.  The world drum offered agogo bells and Steel Drums.

Steve’s energetic teaching style left the students wanting more!  A great time was had by all!