PHOENIX, AZ (December 15, 2009) – In November 2009, teaching artist Josh Schachter received the inaugural Arizona Teaching Artist Award for outstanding achievements, innovation and leadership in the field of arts learning. The Arizona Commission on the Arts, the state’s arts agency, awarded Schachter with $2500 in recognition of his completed project, “Finding Voice.”
The Teaching Artist Award is designed to identify teaching artists who advance the arts learning and teaching artist field in Arizona through the use of innovation and best practices in their work in school and community settings.
Schachter founded the “Finding Voice” project with English/ELD teacher Julie Kasper and with the support of the Every Voice in Action Foundation and Tucson Pima Arts Council. “Finding Voice” is a literacy and visual arts project dedicated to helping Tucson’s refugee and immigrant youth at Catalina Magnet High School build confidence, improve their academic skills, strengthen their connection to their community, and develop their visual and literary voices. The project focused on service learning, youth-produced media and the incorporation of 21st Century skills into the classroom setting. Students produced digital stories, letters, poems and other pieces that addressed the themes of “Change” and the “American Dream.” The students’ work has been shared through exhibits, public presentations, publications, and websites, and in venues ranging from bus stops to the U.S. Senate.
Schachter was selected by a panel representing a broad range of experience in a variety of artistic disciplines. Panelists included Deb Vaughan, Arts Education Coordinator at the Oregon Arts Commission in Salem, Oregon, and Ann Kresge, professional book artist, printmaker and Community Arts Coordinator for the Salem Art Association in Salem, Oregon. Alison Hughes of Tucson, a Governor-appointed Commissioner for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, chaired the panel.
As a requirement of the project award, Schachter will present findings and project results to the broader Arizona community in an upcoming public forum, meeting, workshop or conference. For information about this and other offerings to the Arizona arts community, visit the Arts Commission’s website at www.azarts.gov.
About Josh Schachter
A photographer, visual/digital storyteller, teaching artist, and activist, Schachter believes images are a powerful means of sharing stories that, in turn, foster personal and community transformation. Schachter holds a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he explored how urban youth perceive their environment through their photographs. This teaching experience helped him recognize the power of photography as a means for youth to explore their lives and to educate others through their lenses. Over the past decade he taught documentary photography and visual storytelling to youth, teachers, neighborhood groups, and nonprofit organizations in places ranging from New Delhi to Nigeria. Since 2005 he has developed a passion for digital storytelling and has facilitated digital storytelling workshops in the US, India and South Africa. He founded the photography program at the Tucson-based nonprofit Voices Inc., where he mentored low-income teenagers in documentary photography and managed an after-school youth magazine program. When he is not teaching, he photographs social and environmental issues for nonprofit organizations throughout the United States. His images have been published internationally in books, magazines, newspapers, films, and web sites, and in venues ranging from the New York Times to the Navajo Times. View his work at www.joshphotos.com and www.findingvoiceproject.org.
About the Arizona Commission on the Arts
One of 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies across the United States, the Arizona Commission on the Arts is an agency of the State of Arizona that supports a statewide arts network. The Arizona Commission on the Arts supports access to quality arts and arts education opportunities for all Arizona citizens; the development and retention of statewide jobs in the nonprofit arts, culture and education sectors; and increased economic impact in local communities through arts-based partnerships that develop tax and small business revenue.
We imagine an Arizona where everyone can participate in and experience the arts.
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Images available upon request.
