Martha Carothers
Science-Based Children’s Storybooks
Visual storybooks were created during the 2019 spring semester by University of Delaware undergraduate Art & Design, Elementary Teacher Education, and Marine Science students through the collaborative courses, ART309: Book Arts and EDUC367 & MAST367: Science Through Storybooks. The students actively participated and contributed in the interdisciplinary course format to understand, create, teach, and communicate scientific methods and principles about the ocean and aquatic life to elementary school children. The storybooks highlighted two species that greatly rely on Delaware’s beaches, horseshoe crabs and sandpiper birds. Through a partnership with Brookside Elementary School, Elementary Teacher Education students had the opportunity to share the storybooks with 60 first grade students.
Johnathan Cox
The Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, an indigenous perspective on Coastal Hazards and Sea-level Rise
This project with the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware is a crucial component of a funded interdisciplinary project titled, Building Resilience Awareness: Documenting Coastal Hazards and Sea-level Rise Impacts Statewide. Stories and imagery have the potential to create greater awareness about statewide sea-level rise (SLR) and intensifying storms (IS) impacts and resulting resiliency concerns. In this project we are raising public awareness of SLR and IS impacts through storytelling and a participatory app.
The most significant accomplishment of the project was getting Lenape Community members together and starting a conversation about what steps and projects the community members wanted to work on next. A video was produced of Lenape community members talking about their perspective on rising waters and intensifying storms. The project also set the groundwork for hosting an art exhibition.
Abigail Donovan
Creative Vision Factory Summer Studio Assistantship in collaboration with the Creative Vision Factory.
This PAC grant enabled the Creative Vision Factory (CVF) to hire intern, Matt Doe, for 8 weeks this past summer. Matt provided project support for a mosaic tile commission that was being developed with Warner Elementary School and Delaware Children and Families First. This commission will be installed in the spring of 2020. Matt was trained in every step of the creation of sgraffito ceramic tile used for the mosaic commission at Warner Elementary school. Throughout his 8-week post Matt fully participated in life at the Creative Vision Factory and built relationships with our member artists and learned a lot about the obstacles they face as behavioral health and social service clients.
Jessica Edwards
“Uprising” in collaboration with the Delaware Art Museum.
UPRISING: Remembrance, Resistance, Revival, a multidisciplinary work, performed by Pieces a Dream, Inc. (POAD), was originally commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum in September 2018. It featured the choreography of Ashley SK Davis and the visual art of Terrance Vann. Using modern dance and contemporary art, UPRISING was an artistic expression of the events in Wilmington, Delaware in 1968, including the populist revolution and the National Guard occupation of the city. Students in Dr. Jessica Edwards’s class, Rhetorics of Diversity, a writing course which seeks to introduce students to issues of race and inclusive writing practices as they prepare for the workplace, attended the performance and discovered intersections of history, visual performance, and writing to develop notions of history’s connection to the present. In addition to pre-performance discussions with the creators of the UPRISING production as well as workshops related to advocacy provided by Cimone Philpotts, students in Edwards’s course produced both reflective writings and informative documents about the ways in which the production adds to their understanding of Delaware’s racial past and its current state. Students imagined possibilities for future engagement between the University and community partners.
Gabrielle Foreman
“Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Delaware’s Forgotten Foremother of Civil Rights” in collaboration with the following community partners: Delaware Historical Society, Delaware Art Museum, Hip Hop artist Richard Raw, Twin Poets, Christina Cultural Arts Center, Kuumba
The purpose of this arts-based research project was to create a production and develop a manuscript based on the life of May Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black woman newspaper editor in North America. Born to a free family in Wilmington, after editing the Provincial Freeman in the 1850s, she went on to become the first Black woman to enroll at Howard University’s new Law School. Shadd Cary was a fiery participant in the Colored Conventions movement, where she was one of the few women recognized by the hundreds of men whose names appear as official delegates. The project included a multidisciplinary production of original choreography, visual art, music, and poetry to portray the life and times of Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
The goals of this project were to continue the work of sharing the legacy of little known African and African American women by (a) creating an original multidisciplinary work based on the life of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and (b) developing a manuscript based on (a) data collected through interviews of current successful women and (b) surveys revealing the impact of the performance and workshops created and implemented with school age students and audience members.
The results of the project included a one-hour production with original music, poetry and choreography. The program was performed in Wilmington, Alabama, Texas and Belize. Seven choreographers, three poets and two composers contributed to the production. Twelve performers, ranging in age from 11 to 72 performed in the production.
Roger Horowitz
Oral History Collaboration with the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware.
The project successfully interviewed 11 members of the Delaware Jewish community, principally located in Wilmington, Delaware. It fully engaged the board and members of the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware (JHSD) to work closely with the student engaged in the interviews, Dalia Handelman, advising her on interview content, brokering contacts with potential interviewees, and generating positive feedback from her activities. Within the Jewish community the University of Delaware has received stellar comments for its financial support of the project, with its reputation and contribution enhanced by the adept and personable manner of Ms. Handelman.
McKay Jenkins
Statewide Master Naturalist Curriculum
The Delaware Master Naturalist Program is a science-based natural resource training program jointly coordinated by University of Delaware Cooperative Extension and Delaware Nature Society. The program will provide a foundation for trainees to become naturalists and upon completion of initial training, Master Naturalists will give back to Delaware’s natural world with volunteer services to include education and outreach, service projects, and citizen science.
Through the support of the PAC mini-grant program, a 14-chapter, 500-page, fully illustrated book manuscript was created which will serve as the curriculum for the Delaware Master Naturalist Curriculum.
Thomas Leitch
How to Read the News
During the period of the award, Thomas Leitch traveled to ten Delaware public libraries, where he gave PowerPoint presentations and led discussions about how to read the news during times when the veracity and authority of news reports are increasingly problematic. Leitch welcomed pushback against my rather provocative thesis—that instead of dividing news sources into real and fake, reliable and unreliable, it’s better to treat all news sources as sort-of-reliable and read particular stories more actively to determine on an ad hoc basis exactly how to trust each one.
Colin Miller
Arts Alliance Fellowship in collaboration with SummerCollab.
SummerCollab is a nationally recognized non-profit founded in Delaware. Through its deep-rooted network of community based agencies and schools, it co-constructs extraordinary learning environments that inspire purpose and passion in nearly 2700 of Delaware’s highest need K – 8th grade children. SummerCollab achieves these outcomes by equipping community centers with curriculum, reading intervention programs, and specialized talent, which it recruits, onboards and funds. List of potential community partners
The 5 University of Delaware Summer Scholars integrated arts into the program at SummerCollab’s Host Tylers Camp Sites: Salesianum and Castle Hills Elementary School. The students desined and taught lessons that were focused on social emotional learning. They also prepared and taught lessons based on the Mary Ann Shadd Cary project.
Stephanie Raible
Social Awareness Through Youth Arts
The Our Lens Challenge asked high schoolers from across the state to take a compelling photo of something within their town or city and caption it with the story of the social challenge, or opportunity, that it connects to. Submissions became a part of a statewide photo-journal showcasing what young Delawareans find inspiring about their towns. Finalists were honored at the November 6th Building Opportunity Keynote event at Hotel DuPont, where their work was featured.
Our Lens Challenge was funded through UD’s Partnership for Arts and Culture, along with support from the Human Development and Family Sciences (HDFS) and Horn Entrepreneurship departments. This project was done in close collaboration and partnership with Dual School, FourYouth Productions, and the Delaware Community Foundation (DCF).
Greg Shelnutt
Moving with the Rising Tide
Students enrolled in the Sussex Academy’s 9th grade Integrated Science and Foundations of Graphic Design classes explored the impacts of Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Storm Intensification (SI) on communities in coastal and inland Sussex County. During the course of the project, students considered two key questions: 1) How does water shape the environment? and 2) What is humans’ effect on nature?
To process and reflect on these thoughts, the students engaged in a series of art-integrated lessons with UD Faculty members Greg Shellnut (Department of Art & Design, Chair and Professor of Art) and Dr. Jamē McCray (Sea Grant Delaware, Human-Environment Interaction) and DiAE Teaching Artists Leah Beach (Photography) and Meredith Covert (Dance and Drama). Professor Shellnut introduced students to the process of geo-tagging, which is a method of using community-sourced photography to empower scientists to document our environment throughout the world. Students also participated in a movement workshop with Dr. McCray with focus on her work in using dance elements to teach water science. Additionally, the students were enrolled in one of two art-based tracts. In the photography tract, students worked with Ms. Beach to learn different elements of photography and received hands-on guidance on how to best answer the two leading questions through artful photography. In the dance tract, Ms. Covert lead the students in a series of three movement workshops where they used the elements of dance to create choreography, focused on the project’s essential questions. The event culminated with an assembly during which the 9th graders presented their work to the 8th grade students at Sussex Academy.
Lawrence Stomberg
Bach in Wilmington, Phase 2.
At Hanover Presbyterian, Dr. Stomberg played for the Food Pantry during breakfast hours. He spoke with individual clients of the Pantry and would then play certain pieces of music dedicated to them – a kind of “dialogue” between their words and my music. Similarly, Dr. Stomberg performed at the Food Pantry at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, where he interacted with the folks getting their weekly produce.
At the Achievement Center, a re-entry program for the recently incarcerated, Dr. Stomberg played for participants while having them create whatever artistic expression they chose, which resulted in some heartfelt and profound visual art and poetry. In addition to these visits, Dr. Stomberg was invited for the second year in a row to perform as part of the Achievement Center graduation ceremony in July.
At Newark High School, Dr. Stomberg worked with the Music and Art faculty teams to present his initial project and then sit amongst the students as they created drawn ceramic tiles in response to the music. The tiles are being hung in the school as a mural-like exhibition, celebrating the artistic talent and inspiration of the students in response to the music.
At Temple United, Dr. Stomberg’s performance included audio recording of voices and singing with his playing, as well as footage of the valuable work ministry the members of that church do in their West Center City neighborhood in Wilmington. The performance was specifically designed to tell the story of Temple United.