BrightLights program seeks to incorporate arts with learning for area students

Starting this fall, students at nine Richmond-area schools will listen to the jazz improvisation of pianist Cecil Taylor and others to learn about the civil-rights movement and how strong, individual voices planted the seeds of social change.

At four other elementary schools, language-arts lessons will be reinforced through dance, puppetry, theater and other art forms.

At a middle school and a high school, students will use Shakespeare and other theater to improve oral communication and presen tation skills.

At a time when school budgets are being squeezed severely, educators and other supporters of the arts have launched a regional effort to expand the use of music, dance and theater to improve student learning and achievement. The BrightLights Education Initiative at Richmond CenterStage is being designed to make downtown's new, $74 million performing-arts center more than a fancy place to see a concert or a play.

The education initiative, which is being funded privately and costs about $400,000 this year, is taking a multifaceted approach to the arts and youths.

It's developing programs catered to the needs of select schools, providing access via the Internet to live performances and other educational content, as well as creating opportunities for young artists to perform in premier facilities and to work alongside arts professionals.

The effort is intended to be embedded in the existing curriculum and to serve as an extension of existing school programs as well as ones offered by local arts groups, including the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Richmond Ballet and the School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community.

"It means our children will be exposed in a variety of ways," said Frank E. Williams, instructional specialist for fine arts for Richmond Public Schools. "It's all a plus for our kids."

The arts can provide a rich alternative to the traditional methods of teaching history and other core subjects, said Bob Hallahan, a jazz pianist involved in developing the "Jazz 21: The Voice of Social Change" program. He said the histories of jazz and the civil-rights movement overlap, and each was fueled by strong voices that tested boundaries. "Jazz 21" will put the music in its historical context and allow students to hear it being performed and, in some cases, to play it themselves.

"It's another angle or approach that'll hopefully provide a different sense of what [civil rights] is all about, and maybe light up a different set of brain cells," Hallahan said.

The programs under development will be tested in the 2010-2011 school year at select schools, with the hope of expanding to other schools in subsequent years, said Janet S. Krogman, director of education for the CenterStage Foundation.

The potential upside to using the arts to improve learning is tremendous, if Petra Shaffer-Gottschalk is any judge.

The freshman at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology in Petersburg was beaming Wednesday night after stepping offstage at the Carpenter Theatre following a rehearsal for this weekend's Lights Up festival, which will include performances by youth arts groups. She said she gets such joy out of acting that her enthusiasm has spread to other academic subjects.

"If you really love what you're doing -- and you're able to do it every day -- it works wonders for you," she said.

Fellow thespian Kate Vehrs, a freshman at Clover Hill High School in Chesterfield County, agreed. "I have so much more inspiration to keep working and keep my grades up."

Such benefits were trumpeted in "Champions of Change," a 1999 study for the Arts Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

"When well-taught, the arts provide young people with authentic learning experiences that engage their minds, hearts and bodies. The learning experiences are real and meaningful for them," the study said. "While learning in other disciplines may often focus on development of a single skill or talent, the arts regularly engage multiple skills and abilities. Engagement in the arts -- whether the visual arts, dance, music, theater or other disciplines -- nurtures the development of cognitive, social and personal competencies."

Austin Cooper, a freshman at Powhatan High, added a footnote. "It keeps you sane. Sometimes, you need a little arts on your mind."

He's one of several students learning video production at the Genworth BrightLights Arts Education Center. The facility occupies 8,000 square feet on the third floor of CenterStage's Dorothy Pauley Square, and it includes a computer lab, as well as rooms for classes and rehearsals for the Richmond Youth Symphony Orchestra and other groups.

The computer lab -- known as the Digital Arts Learning Center -- will be used to make performances and other educational content available live or on demand to CenterStage's partner schools throughout the Richmond region.

The technology has been a critical part of the planning for CenterStage because area school officials made it clear they would not be able to afford to shuttle students to and from the downtown arts center for performances and lectures, said Charles M. Metzgar, chairman of the CenterStage Foundation's education committee.

"When the curriculum partnerships are doing their thing, they're doing it in their classrooms," he said.

Richmond School Board member Adria Graham Scott attests as a parent to the benefits of the arts on children. Two of her sons participated in Richmond Ballet's Minds in Motion program for fourth-graders, with another son set to enroll next year.

"I think it's been a great morale-builder. It instills this sense of risk-taking," she said. "I think that's a lesson applied across the board, to academics [and] self-esteem."

Contact Will Jones at (804) 649-6911 or wjones@timesdispatch.com.