Think back to elementary and middle school-the time of playgrounds, recess and everyone's favorite, classes, like art and music. Ah, the simple life.
But these classes would not be possible in Durham public schools without the Durham Arts Council's Creative Arts in Public/Private Schools (CAPS) program and the Verizon "Literacy Through The Arts" grant the program has received for the past three years.
The CAPS program has been in existence for 34 years, allowing artists to work in elementary and middle schools and interact with children in a classroom setting.
"The artists can go into schools and create residencies with the curriculum of students and impact students," said Shana Adams, education and administrative coordinator for Durham Arts Council. "It helps promote cultural knowledge and self-esteem."
The residencies of the artists, who include both visual and performance artists, typically run over the course of five days for one hour a day in a single class. They cost on average $360 each, but vary depending on the artist a school chooses to invite.
"Schools are allocated two dollars per child in elementary schools and one dollar per child in middle and high schools for CAPS programs," said Banu Valladares, director of community arts education and partnerships for the Durham Arts Council. "This allows schools to have a little bit of extra money for the arts. Extra funding comes from PTA fundraisers."
Yet some schools cannot afford to bring in more than one residency during a school year because of a small student body and/or a relatively inactive PTA. .
But the grant from Verizon, weighing in this year at $5000, allows CAPS to send artists over to these needier schools that cannot foot the bill, and covers both artists' fees and supplies. Valladares explains the program as working on a sliding scale system.
"The grant depends on the percent of students eligible for free or reduced lunches and if the schools are under Title I," Valladares said. "So some schools get 100 percent of their fees covered, and it goes all the way down to covering only 60 percent for some schools."
The $5000 is significantly less than the $7500 it has been provided in previous years.
"It's less, which is usually the case with grant orders," Valladares explained. "You get less each year to encourage you to find other places for funding."
No matter what the subsidy, this grant represents an enormous windfall for area schools, providing an influx of arts enrichment and education from nearby artists.
The residencies of Joy Acey, a local poet and performance artist, typifies the experience that CAPS and the grant can provide to schools.
"Two of the things I do are poetry, North Carolina poets and poet laureates," said Acey. "We [the students and I] create poems and orally present them at a poet tea at the end of the week. It's going through the entire process."
Acey notes that this process is integral to enriching the education of Durham schoolchildren who may have little contact with the arts.
"Most of these schools are focusing on writing tests, so they're drilled all the time on writing," Acey said. "This is an opportunity for them to see writing as something creative and fun, but are still developing skills they can use on the test."
Willa Brigham, a CAPS artist who writes children's songs and short stories and hosts the Emmy Award winning television show Smart Start Kids, agrees with Acey's sentiments.
"I'm a guest artist, not a teacher, so I can be flamboyant and outrageous," said Brigham. "I bring a different view to these classrooms. My stories come to life in a way that teachers that aren't as exhilarant or outrageous can't do."
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