Join us May 2-4, 2023, as Arizona teaching artists and arts organizations showcase the innovative work taking place across Arizona’s arts learning sector.

May 2 – May 4, 2023
9:00 am – 2:30 pm

REGISTER

The AZ Arts Learning Virtual Symposium provides professional development focused on trends and topics in arts learning. Designed to bring together Arizona’s arts learning community, the three-day virtual professional development will focus on sharing tools and resources to equip attendees with the inspiration and information they need to provide meaningful arts learning programing to diverse communities across Arizona. Join us as local teaching artists and arts organizations showcase the innovative work taking place across Arizona’s arts learning sector.


Day 1, Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Creative Youth Development and Youth Programming

Participants will develop strategies to elevate and amplify youth voice within their arts learning programming. Presenters include adult accomplices and young people from Arizona arts organizations who have participated in the AZ Creative Youth Development Cohort.

Welcome 9:00am – 9:15am ACA Staff
Session 1 9:15am – 10:30am Phoenix Conservatory of Music
Break 10:30am – 10:45am —————————————-
Session 2 10:45am – 12:00pm Rising Youth Theatre
Lunch Break 12:00pm – 1:00pm —————————————-
Session 3 1:00pm – 2:15pm Monsoon Lab
Closure 2:15pm – 2:30pm ACA Staff

Phoenix Conservatory of Music is a creative youth development organization who uses youth development principals to develop voice and leadership for all students, even students in their Early Childhood Programs. Come and explore how you can teach your craft to young learners (Pre-K through Grade 2) in ways that grant students the opportunity to start from a place of strength, discover and explore their artist’s voice as they create, collaborate and communicate through their art!

Rising Youth Theater For many organizations working with young people who aspire towards deep collaboration and shared power with youth, we know that shifting material power and leadership is vital. We often come into this work with strong ideals, and we know how we want to engage at our best. But what happens when things get hard? What happens in the moments of crisis, challenge, or “stickiness” where we find ourselves reaching for more familiar hierarchies? In this session, youth and adult staff members from Rising Youth Theatre’s leadership team will dig deeply into our organizational structure, how we work together when things are great and when things are hard, and share stories from our own experiences of working together and how we move through conflict and challenge.

Monsoon Lab will have four teaching artists share their experience of working with students, kinder through twelfth grade, in the Globe-Miami-San Carlos area. Each of these teaching artists have experienced the challenges of working with youth in a rural and impoverished environment, many of whom have been exposed to systemic trauma and abuse. While we do not turn a blind eye to the difficulties of our children and young people, we choose to see them as rugged and resilient–people with an emerging strength and beauty.

Three of the presenters (Lyndon, Moon and Stewart) are young people in their 20s who grew up in Globe and found the resources to excel in their artistic crafts of graphic design, literary arts and music, respectively. For this season, they are choosing to give back to their community and invest in our local children and young people through art workshops in the schools and community and through mentoring teens to become leaders who serve their communities. The panel will be facilitated by Leslie Kim, a teaching artist and Director of Monsoon Youth, who is regularly inspired by her young colleagues to continue doing the work.

We invite you to join us and be inspired by the stories of these young leaders. You might also stretch your imagination for what is possible in your context and find more hope for the journey ahead.


Day 2 Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Arts & Wellness

Participants will develop strategies to provide holistic arts and wellness programs in their community. Presentations will spotlight past Lifelong Arts Engagement and Youth Arts Engagement grantees.

Welcome 9:00am – 9:15am ACA Staff
Session 1 9:15am – 10:30am Dr. Susan Bendix
Break 10:30am – 10:45am —————————————-
Session 2 10:45am – 12:00pm Journey to the Center of Hope
Lunch Break 12:00pm – 1:00pm —————————————-
Session 3 1:00pm – 2:15pm Grey Box Collective (GBC)
Closure 2:15pm – 2:30pm ACA Staff

In the day’s first session, Dr. Susan Bendix shares about; MOVING GRIEF – MOVING LOSS; an arts and body based approach to grief and it’s link to a dance, theater and poetry program for incarcerated women.

In MOVING GRIEF – MOVING LOSS story is embedded in gesture, feelings are explored through shape, line drawings visually map the course of loss and map a positive future, and ritual brings community together.

MOVING GRIEF – MOVING LOSS invites participants to reflect and process the complex emotions stirred by loss, grief and trauma, whether experienced long ago or recently, allowing loss to take expressive form through gesture, shape and voice. Using techniques from Somatic Experiencing ™, dance, theater, improvisation and ritual, this work re-invigorates what we have instinctively understood for a long time; namely that physical expression within community offers health and healing outcomes no pill or talk therapy alone can provide.

Journey to the Center of Hope’s goal is to create a different direction of thinking for our Veterans and to provide new coping skills to help with PTSD. In this session, you will hear about the history and goals of the program based in rural Kingman, AZ. Presenters will share a glimpse of a typical course in the 6-week photography program. And one of the previously participating Veterans will share first-hand experience and impacts of this work. The session will end with time for questions and sharing what further resources are available to Veterans in the state.

In the day’s final session, hear from Grey Box Collective (GBC) Founder Molly W. Schenck and GBC creatives Lisa Jordan, Chasity Flores, Delia Ibañez, & Karla “Hollywood” Pierce on the role that Trauma-Informed Creative Practices has played in the organization, in devising GBC’s body of work, and the impact on the individuals who are a part of the company. Beyond what each panelist wishes to share on their artistic journeys, this session will be participant driven, so come with questions you wish to spark conversations around. Participants can expect offerings of resourcing activities and provocative dialogue that will encourage everyone to spend a bit more time playing in the messy, grey areas of life.


Day 3, Thursday, May 4, 2023

Creative Aging

Participants will discover the unique ways that quality, meaningful, participatory arts engagement improves quality of life for adults across the aging spectrum. Presenters include teaching artists, arts organizations and aging/health organizations engaged in the AZ Creative Aging Initiative.

Welcome 9:00am – 9:15am ACA Staff
Session 1 9:15am – 10:30am Beatitudes Campus
Break 10:30am – 10:45am —————————————-
Session 2 10:45am – 12:00pm Sonya Evans and Holly Cluff
Lunch Break 12:00pm – 1:00pm —————————————-
Session 3 1:00pm – 2:15pm ArtMobile-AZ
Closure 2:15pm – 2:30pm ACA Staff

Beatitudes Campus: The aging population is one of the fastest growing demographics in America. By 2030, the number of Americans age 55 and older will almost double from 60 million to 107.6 million. Within these increased numbers, we can expect at least 10% to receive a dementia diagnosis. Even with this expected increase of numbers, very few have a good understanding of what to expect with a dementia diagnosis or what is needed to remain a happy and successful member of their communities. A vital need of these folks, will be meaningful engagement opportunities. These kinds of opportunities allow for continued connection, improved mental health and well-being, and empowerment. In this session, you will learn about the three stages of Dementia, acquire tools for better communication and connection, and gain a better understanding of how environment is key when working with folks living with dementia. There is time built into the session to practice the skills discussed and have thoughtful discussion with your fellow attendees. Come learn how you can lend a hand in creating a better world for those living with dementia.

Sonya Evans and Holly Cluff will describe their experiences in providing taiko drumming instruction at a memory care center. In their first visit they quickly discovered they needed to modify their original plans. They’ll share tips and strategies they implemented while adapting the instruction and activities to support participation. The session will also include opportunities to hear from conference attendees about how they’ve been meeting the needs of their older students.

ArtMobile-AZ – Creative Aging in Rural Communities: Enhancing the Lives of Rural Older Adults, through Creative Aging Principals and Practice. Join Lisa as she shares on creating unique partnerships and programming to make the arts accessible to older adults across the aging spectrum, in their rural communities. In this interactive session, learn how Lisa is using community-based Creative Aging programming to combat social isolation, build creative community, and improve the quality of life for rural older adults and caregivers in Arizona.

Lisa will present an overview of the Arts-n-Meals: Nourishing Essential Creative Connections program. Discover how this creative aging program is reducing social isolation among older adults living in their homes in rural communities that have no senior centers, therefore no opportunities for creative and social engagements. Loneliness and social isolation have become a critical crisis, among older adults in rural communities. Learn how the program has increased rural older adults’ social connections, creative engagements, communication, imagination, and resilience. Find out about the program’s creative partnerships, cross-sector collaborations with various organizations, to achieve these beneficial outcomes for older adults in rural communities. Lisa will also share on the program’s collaborative creative aging community public art projects: Story-Stones ceramic sculpture and Silhouette Stories Project ceramic mosaic. Explore with Lisa the Arts-n-Meals program’s logic model, methods of evaluation, outcomes, and resources. The presentation will conclude with a simple creative engagement and a time of questions and answers.

Presenter Information

Phoenix Conservatory of Music‘s mission is to unleash the power of music through quality music education and experiences that are affordable and accessible.

Our Early Childhood programs are a fun, social, play based way to build music competency in young children through music learning games, music and movement activities, musical stories, music technology, direct instruction on classroom instruments, singing, and piano. Your presenter, Regina Nixon, is an Early Childhood Music Specialist and the Executive Director of PCM with over 23 years in creating engaging music programs for young learners.

Presented by – Regina Nixon Learn more at www.PCMrocks.org

Founded in 2011, Rising Youth Theatre‘s mission is “To imagine and build the world we want to live in through youth-driven, multigenerational collaboration and justice-centered artistic process and performance that generates reflection, connection and action.”Rising Youth Theatre is a youth leadership organization working at the intersection of art and social justice. We believe that theatre and the arts are powerful tools with which young people can stand up and advocate for themselves and their peers, and that artmaking and storytelling are a catalyst for change. Young people work in leadership spaces across all levels of our organization, including the staff, board, and creative spaces. We produce original plays around topics that matter to our community, including, race, mental health, student push-out, and more. Learn more at www.risingyouththeatre.org

Presented by – Trini Lugo, Julio-Cesar Sauceda, Ty Muhammad, Sarah Sullivan

Monsoon Youth promotes the growth and well-being of children and young people in the Globe-Miami-San Carlos region through creative exploration of the arts and humanities. Since 1998, we have produced numerous theatre shows with local youth and more recently have performed youth-written plays and short films. We partnered with local schools in 2015 and teach multidisciplinary art workshops to K-12 students that focus on creative voice and personal identity. Through our work in the schools and on stage, we have established a strong foundation for youth leadership and community impact.

Presented by Leslie Kim, Lyndon Baker, Moon Thomas, Stewart Kim Learn more at https://monsoonyouth.org/

Dr. Susan Bendix is a gifted, award-winning teaching artist. She received the 2019 Phoenix Mayor’s Arts Award for her work in dance. In addition to an accomplished career in dance, improvisation and choreography, she is also a Somatic Experience™ practitioner (a body based psychotherapeutic approach to trauma). She has a doctorate in education and is a trained mindfulness instructor. She has worked in California prisons with Marin Shakespeare and LA based Theatre Workers Project. She recently received a grant from ACA to work with women in Perryville Women’s Prison in AZ

Learn more at www.think-motion.org

Journey to the Center of Hope was formed for Veterans to have a place to be creative, to imagine, to believe in themselves and to learn a new way of thinking by using photography as a second language to express their emotions and help them with anxiety, depression and PTSD. We are committed to building relationships with Veterans and their families as they look to the future with a renewed sense of hope and discover life through a new lens. Our goal is to create a different direction of thinking for our Veterans and to provide them new coping skills to help them with PTSD. By putting a camera in the Veterans hands, they can focus, and learn new way of seeing the positive benefits, adventure, creativity, self-esteem, confidence and so much more. We strive to create a healthy environment for our Veterans and have put mental health at the fore front of our company so that veterans have a new hope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN2-J4VOP00

Dan Hardy – Veteran
I joined the U.S. Navy June of 1969, serving in Vietnam at Nha Bay Base as member of the Naval Support Activity and advisory group. During my time, I was stationed on the coast of Vietnam. I am retired now and live in Kingman, Arizona. I was referred to Journey to the Center of Hope to take a photography course and through hands on experience I have been able to submerge myself in photography which has helped to alleviate some of my PTSD symptoms. I was once told by a counselor that a lot of veterans take up motorcycle riding, or rock climbing. I have photography to help me.

Presented by Byron Buckholz, Vicki Buckholz, Dan Hardy Learn more at journeytothecenterofhope.com

Grey Box Collective (GBC) devises interdisciplinary, experimental, and post-dramatic performances about social-emotional wellbeing (i.e. we make weird art about tough stuff). GBC is a trauma-informed arts organization committed to holding compassionate spaces for ourselves and others. Through our actions, reflections, and art-making, we aim to challenge and re-shape the status quo in our organization, in our bodies, and our communities. Our vision is to usher in the future of the performing arts in the way we create work, the performances we make, and how we operate the organization as a whole.

Presented by Molly W. Schenck, Lisa Jordan, Chasity Flores, Delia Ibañez, & Karla “Hollywood” Pierce

Learn more at www.greyboxcollective.com

Mollie Heiden is a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist (CTRS) based in Phoenix. She has worked in aging services for the last 7 years in both the Adult Day Health Services and Long-Term Care settings, with a focus on those living with moderate to late-stage dementia. She currently works at The Beatitudes Campus on the Advanced Dementia Floor, and as a consultant for the Comfort Matters Program. She is passionate about helping folks living with dementia continue to do the things they love through person directed programming, adaptations empowerment and autonomy.

Holly Cluff created the TaikoMIND framework for mindful learning as a way to combine her love of taiko with her expertise as an instructor and her passion for sharing mindfulness. She has been providing workshops in a variety of settings for ages 5-100! TaikoMIND workshops are fun, energizing and teach life lessons that can inspire everyday mindfulness. www.tucsontaiko.org, www.beingmindfulmatters.org

Sonya Evans has been a member of Odaiko Sonora(Tucson’s taiko group) since 2004 and as such has practiced, performed and instructed others in the art of Japanese ensemble drumming. Her mission is to make taiko accessible to everyone, including individuals with differing abilities and for all ages.

Lisa Swanson is a creative aging teaching artist, and ceramic sculptor. She holds a BFA and MA in Arts in Medicine from University of Florida. Lisa received training and completed the Arizona Commission on the Arts, AZ Creative Aging Teaching Artist Institute in 2018 and Rural-BIPOC Creative Aging Communities Cohort in 2022. She founded ArtMobile-AZ nonprofit, a creative aging arts organization, designed to expand access to visual arts for rural older adults across the aging spectrum, in Casa Grande and Pinal County, Arizona. Lisa is dedicated to promoting creative expression, social inclusion, and quality of life for rural older adults. http://www.artmobilevan.org/