Posted November 15th, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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Tariq on set at Spark Studios
With his heart pounding, Tariq clicked on the email. Was he going to chase his dream of becoming a filmmaker in New York City? Was he going to become the first person in his family to go to college?“We are pleased to inform you…” He didn’t need to read anymore: Tariq was going to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, class of 2022!Tariq didn’t have an easy childhood: born on the island of Jamaica, he moved at age 9 to the City of Poughkeepsie and struggled to find his place. In 10th grade, Tariq discovered his passion for making films at The Art Effect. With The Art Effect, Tariq earned an income, gained important filmmaking and workforce skills, and found a home among his peers and teachers. With this support, Tariq felt confident applying for college.Tariq was accepted into one of the best film schools in the country and would become the first person in his family to attend college. With The Art Effect’s guidance—from learning about filmmaking, to receiving mentorship during the college application process, to affording the full cost of attending college—Tariq’s dream became a reality.Local youth like Tariq need your help. By making a gift to The Art Effect, you are supporting programs that help students get into college and reach their ambitions. On Tuesday, November 27th, The Art Effect is participating in Giving Tuesday, the largest charitable day of the year nationwide.
Tariq and MaryEllen, Director of Education and Experience Programming, shortly after telling us he was accepted into NYU!
Your contribution can make a huge difference to local youth in need of The Art Effect’s programs and mentorship. With your help, future artists and media masters will be able to take their next step toward higher education.Join us on November 27th to reach our goal of raising $6,000 in 24 hours and help students like Tariq realize their dream of attending college.Make a gift by clicking here!
Tariq gave us a tour inside the Tisch Building at NYU! He’s enjoying all of his classes as a freshman so far.
Posted October 22nd, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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On September 25th, 2018, The Art Effect held its inaugural Art After Dark at The Henry A. Wallace Center at The FDR Presidential Library and Home, honoring Michael J. Quinn and Niki Pagones Quinn, Creative Breanna Lee Nussbickel, and Amina Kearney.
140 guests enjoyed a wide variety of immersive arts experiences, including digital art created by students of The Art Institute and Junior Art Institute, as well as an interactive projection that had them jumping for joy!Our youth volunteers in A Light in the Dark painted guests with colorful light sources during a photoshoot to create beautiful, bright images in a room that was otherwise pitch black! Thank you to Jen Kiaba, one of our teaching artists, for being our painting with light photographer.Meanwhile, in the FDR Inks & Drinks room, guests tasted our signature cocktail “A Mead Buzz” donated by Salt Point Meadery and tried on custom temporary tattoos while watching youth-produced historic documentaries.Missed it at Art After Dark? Here’s how you can make A Mead Buzz at home:2 oz. Honeymoon mead from Salt Point Meadery2 oz. club soda1 lemon wedge, squeezed1 lemon wedge, garnish on rimSprig of thymeStirredGuests received the star treatment in Quiet on the Set! Our youth production crew directed our guests to act in various scenes using props on a faux movie set. The big surprise: these scenes were later used in the evening’s feature film The Art Effect: An Origin Story. You can view the film here! Note: the password to view the video is ‘art’.Preceding our film screening, our honorees were presented with their 2018 Art After Dark awards, personalized tunnel books handcrafted by Art Institute Alumni Eleanor Milkowski Dahlgren.
Posted October 12th, 2018 — Filed under Testimonials
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Liz is a multi-disciplinary Art Director specializing in boundary-pushing digital creative for gen-z and millennial audiences. Extensive experience defining brands’ visual identities and telling 360-degree stories that engage and empower consumers.
Currently Art Director @ Sweet
Clients include: TBS, School of Doodle, The Georges Malaika Foundation, No Big Deal PR, Clover Letter,Time Out Magazine, Hard Candy, Reebok, Smuggler Films, Greencard Pictues, Eyeball Records
lizriccardi.com
Posted October 12th, 2018 — Filed under Testimonials
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MC Wolfman (aka Dan Betro) is a New York born artist working as an Illustrator and Background Artist, creating work for clients like Red Stylo Media, Print Syndicate, SBC Advertising, Viceland, Thrillist, McGarryBowen, MC CHRIS, and Cartuna.
mc-wolfman.com
We are seeking an engaging, experienced Program Manager for our Empire Programs. The Empire Programs Manager is responsible for directing, coordinating, overseeing, and evaluating the successful implementation of The Art Effect’s anticipated 12 Empire programs. This position supervises between six and eight Teaching Artists/Assistant Teaching Artist teams. This is a full-time (40 hrs/week) position with health benefits and 401k option. Salary commensurate with experience. Applications will be accepted up to and including October 1st, with interviews occurring the week after, with an anticipated program start date of October 15th. Responsibilities and Tasks
Designing learner-centered, constructivist project-based learning units focusing on visual arts and media arts.
Developing curriculum and assessment materials to create a reusable lesson archive.
Leading teams of teachers in planning, implementing, and evaluating media/arts education curriculum for elementary and middle-school aged students and subbing in for teachers when needed.
Managing program interns to oversee all production/post-production in programs.
Assisting with professional development for teachers.
Maintenance of attendance records, activity logs, and other administrative duties that may be relevant to program, along with liaising between parents, administrators, and The Art Effect.
Grow the program’s reach and potential to better fulfill The Art Effect’s mission.
Coaching teachers with regard to The Art Effect pedagogy and reflective/adaptive self-directed improvement.
Upholding and training teachers in following site-specific disciplinary policies.
Meeting weekly with teachers to help them gather supplies, paperwork, fine-tune day by day curriculum, answer questions, brainstorm big-picture directions.
Meeting with on-site school literacy coaches to confer about linking after-school program to in-school curriculum/best practices for using media education to reinforce/strengthen literacy skills.
Compiling/inputting/filing student paperwork, assessments, enrollment, and attendance info.
Drafting outcomes reports, session-by-session, overview as well as site-by-site.
Writing copy/organizing pictures for web updates and social media posts.
Requirements for Position
A Bachelor’s degree in education, arts education, media arts, filmmaking/video production, visual arts, or a related field is required (a Master’s degree in education, arts education, or media production is preferred)
The ability to juggle multiple overlapping high-stakes priorities at once
A minimum of two years coordinating and directing a team, particularly teams working with children or youth
Excellent communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills
A demonstrated track record of effectively teaching a diverse range of learners
A vision for sustaining and expanding The Art Effect’s transformative pedagogy across all Empire Programs
Posted September 4th, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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The Art Effect is Listening for Good!“Last year we provided some feedback about the state of the Art Institute… I wanted to thank you for making so many improvements, including the suggestions we made. We were impressed by the year over year improvement. It shows you listened and are an organization that listens.” — Art Institute parentHere at The Art Effect, we value the input of the students and families we serve. This past year, we initiated the first of what will become many organization-wide feedback loops through the Listen for Good grant, made possible by the Fund For Shared Insight.For our first round of Listen for Good, we created a survey and kept it open from December 12th 2017 through March 30th 2018, sending it to over 400 past and present program participants for a selection of The Art Effect’s programs: Dutchess Arts Camp, Art Institute, MADLab, and Spark Studios. We heard back from 160 people about a wide variety of issues, including schedule and structure of programs and classes, effectiveness of different teaching/learning strategies, and more. Here’s what you told us:
When responses are viewed as a whole, we’re doing an above average job on all questions….
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) system is a standard feature of the Listen for Good survey, enabling The Art Effect to compare results to an industry baseline to get a sense of how we’re doing when compared to other arts and education organizations across the country. A high NPS means that our constituents are highly likely to recommend The ARt Effect to a friend, and, by extension, they are satisfied with our program services. The Art Effect netted an overall NPS of 68 (above the national benchmark). Our NPS score of 68 means we have more people who actively promote our organization than the average arts organization.In addition, half of respondents say we meet their needs extremely well. 135 of 160 respondents say our staff always treat them with, and a majority of respondents (130 of 160) say it’s extremely easy or very easy to get services at our organization. We are very proud of this!
Our program audiences are segregated across racial lines and higher-income groups are overrepresented.
Cross-tabulation reveals our program audiences are diverse, but separated by how clients racially identify as well their relationship to our organization. For example, we found through this survey that our Arts Institute and Dutchess Arts Camps programs serve audiences who are primarily white, and our Spark Studios and MADLab programs serve audiences who are primarily people of color. The Art Effect stands for diversity, inclusion, and so we plan to use this feedback as an opportunity to ensure that our programs are equally accessible to all people, regardless of race, class, gender, and other demographics.This information also helps us realize the nuances of how this programmatic segregation plays out and helps us to learn more about the people we serve and how their situations influence how they rate The Art Effect. For example, when counted as an average, our NPS is 68, above the national benchmark. However, when the results are cross-tabulated by race, it emerges that white respondents rated us an NPS of 74, Latinx respondents rated an NPS of 63, and Black/African-American rated NPS of 52. We first interpreted this to mean that the white folks we serve are largely enthusiastic “promoters” of our work, while most people of color we serve are largely passive. However, because our programs are also predominantly segregated by race, this could also mean that some programs are much better than others. In fact, neither of these assumptions are exactly true. When we closed the loop with Spark Studios and MADLab program youth (who are predominantly Latinx and Black/African-American) and asked for insight as to why they gave us such a low NPS, it turned out that, contrary to what we’d thought, they said they were unlikely to recommend the program because they viewed it as theirs and wanted to keep it for themselves. Though the NPS was low, we now understand that the wording of the question (likelihood to recommend) signified something to students that we had not considered.
Small logistical improvements can make a huge difference to how an overall program flows and feels.
If you participated in any Dutchess Arts Camp, Art Institute, or community program such as MADLab or Spark Studios in 2018 we want to hear from you! Please take the following anonymous survey. It should take no more than 5 minutes to complete: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PWRCLVF. If you have any questions, please call 845.471.7477 and someone can assist you.
Posted August 6th, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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Thank you to all for joining us for our summer edition of After Hours at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory last Thursday. It was a special evening for us, and we hope everyone had a delicious experience!
Proceeds from this event provide support for The Art Effect’s arts education programming. By participating in this fundraising event, you are helping to change young people’s lives through the arts.
A special thank you to our vendors:
Alex’s Restaurant
The Educated Chef
Hudson Valley Marshmallow Company
Millbrook Winery
Plan Bee Farm Brewery
Salt Point Meadery
Taqueria Los Ortiz
Tied House, Inc.
Twisted Soul Food Concepts
Thank you to Absolute Zeros for putting on a special acoustic performance!
Be sure to mark your calendar for our next Art After Hours event, happening November 13, 2018 from 5:30pm-7:30pm!
Posted July 10th, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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We had so much fun celebrating the kickoff of our After Hours event series in April!
We hope you’ll join us for this month’s summer edition of After Hours on Thursday, July 26th.
Your ticket provides you with unlimited tastings from craft breweries, local distilleries, and amazing food vendors, as well as chill music and unique youth art!
Enjoy tastings from vendors like Hudson Valley Marshmallow Company, Salt Point Meadery, Taqueria Los Ortiz, The Educated Chef, Tied House, Inc., and more!
Listen to a special acoustic set performed by Absolute Zeros!
Tickets are on sale now:
thearteffect.org/store/after-hoursTHANK YOU TO OUR AFTER HOURS SPONSOR:Thursday, July 26, 20185:30 – 7:30 pmPoughkeepsie Underwear Factory 3rd floor
Posted June 29th, 2018 — Filed under Uncategorized
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Congratulations to the Poughkeepsie Public Library District for receiving the NEA Big Read Grant earlier this month!
The NEA Big Read is a national initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, which broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. A list of all of this year’s Big Read recipients can be found at arts.gov. “This program encourages people to not only discuss a book together, but be introduced to new perspectives, discuss the issues at the forefront of our own lives, and connect with one another at events,” commented NEA Acting Chair Mary Anne Carter.“We are thrilled to once again receive an NEA grant for the Big Read,” says Library Director Tom Lawrence. “But this is really a grant to our entire community since our local Big Read would not be possible without the enthusiastic involvement of so many partner organizations.” The National Endowment for the Arts announced Big Read grants totaling $1 million that will be distributed to 79 communities across the country in 2018-2019. Poughkeepsie Public Library District will receive $15,000 to coordinate the community-wide reading program this Fall.One of the Poughkeepsie Public Library District’s community partners for this Big Read is The Art Effect, a non-profit organization focused on supporting personal growth, fostering self-expression, and enhancing human services through the arts to build a shared sense of community. The Art Effect has a strong history of collaboration with the libraries of the Hudson Valley thanks to its Mobile Media Lab programming, media and arts workshops that reinforce digital and visual literacy while patrons engage in art and media-making. These two-hour, 10-15 person, contract workshops facilitated by a professional teaching artist are booked and paid for by the library and are free to the public. Sometimes for more intensive programming, libraries have booked two back to back for a 4 hour session, or scheduled multiple sessions over a series of weeks for longer projects. Thanks to the NEA Big Read grant, The Art Effect has 10 two-hour workshops available to book free of cost for libraries looking into offerings and activities for their patrons that can dovetail with the Big Read’s book selections.Workshops can also be custom-made to suit a library’s particular needs and specific requests.Get your library on the list and reach out to us to book a workshop today! Email maryellen@thearteffect.org if you are interested in bringing us in or for more information about our offerings.
Join us on November 27th to reach our goal of raising $6,000 in 24 hours and help students like Tariq realize their dream of attending college.
Make a gift by clicking here!
On September 25th, 2018, The Art Effect held its inaugural Art After Dark at The Henry A. Wallace Center at The FDR Presidential Library and Home, honoring Michael J. Quinn and Niki Pagones Quinn, Creative Breanna Lee Nussbickel, and Amina Kearney.
140 guests enjoyed a wide variety of immersive arts experiences, including digital art created by students of The Art Institute and Junior Art Institute, as well as an interactive projection that had them jumping for joy!
Our youth volunteers in A Light in the Dark painted guests with colorful light sources during a photoshoot to create beautiful, bright images in a room that was otherwise pitch black! Thank you to Jen Kiaba, one of our teaching artists, for being our painting with light photographer.
Meanwhile, in the FDR Inks & Drinks room, guests tasted our signature cocktail “A Mead Buzz” donated by Salt Point
Meadery and tried on custom temporary tattoos while watching youth-produced historic documentaries.
Missed it at Art After Dark? Here’s how you can make A Mead Buzz at home:
2 oz. Honeymoon mead from Salt Point Meadery
2 oz. club soda
1 lemon wedge, squeezed
1 lemon wedge, garnish on rim
Sprig of thyme
Stirred
Guests received the star treatment in Quiet on the Set! Our youth production crew directed our guests to act in various scenes using props on a faux movie set. The big surprise: these scenes were later used in the evening’s feature film The Art Effect: An Origin Story. You can view the film here! Note: the password to view the video is ‘art’.
Preceding our film screening, our honorees were presented with their 2018 Art After Dark awards, personalized tunnel books handcrafted by Art Institute Alumni Eleanor Milkowski Dahlgren.
For our first round of Listen for Good, we created a survey and kept it open from December 12th 2017 through March 30th 2018, sending it to over 400 past and present program participants for a selection of The Art Effect’s programs: Dutchess Arts Camp, Art Institute, MADLab, and Spark Studios. We heard back from 160 people about a wide variety of issues, including schedule and structure of programs and classes, effectiveness of different teaching/learning strategies, and more.
Here’s what you told us:
Thursday, July 26, 2018
5:30 – 7:30 pm
Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory 3rd floor
“We are thrilled to once again receive an NEA grant for the Big Read,” says Library Director Tom Lawrence. “But this is really a grant to our entire community since our local Big Read would not be possible without the enthusiastic involvement of so many partner organizations.” The National Endowment for the Arts announced Big Read grants totaling $1 million that will be distributed to 79 communities across the country in 2018-2019. Poughkeepsie Public Library District will receive $15,000 to coordinate the community-wide reading program this Fall.
One of the Poughkeepsie Public Library District’s community partners for this Big Read is The Art Effect, a non-profit organization focused on supporting personal growth, fostering self-expression, and enhancing human services through the arts to build a shared sense of community. The Art Effect has a strong history of collaboration with the libraries of the Hudson Valley thanks to its Mobile Media Lab programming, media and arts workshops that reinforce digital and visual literacy while patrons engage in art and media-making. These two-hour, 10-15 person, contract workshops facilitated by a professional teaching artist are booked and paid for by the library and are free to the public. Sometimes for more intensive programming, libraries have booked two back to back for a 4 hour session, or scheduled multiple sessions over a series of weeks for longer projects.
Thanks to the NEA Big Read grant, The Art Effect has 10 two-hour workshops available to book free of cost for libraries looking into offerings and activities for their patrons that can dovetail with the Big Read’s book selections.
Workshops can also be custom-made to suit a library’s particular needs and specific requests.
Get your library on the list and reach out to us to book a workshop today! Email maryellen@thearteffect.org if you are interested in bringing us in or for more information about our offerings.
