CARISSA MARSH
A&E Assistant
Shortened classes and teacher-work days are often the most anticipated moments in an elementary school student’s life. They mean freedom, and each precious moment away from the classroom is fully enjoyed by the lucky students.
A close second are those rare class field trips — usually educational and almost always boring.
While many students have experienced this kind of uneventful school-sponsored trip, the Pepperdine Center for the Arts has tried to create something different for young students in elementary and high schools across Los Angeles.
The ARTSReach program has reached out to schoolchildren from Ventura County to the inner city of Los Angeles by offering free arts programs with professional, world-class performers in Smothers Theatre, as well as guided tours of the Weisman Museum.
Many Pepperdine students have witnessed the busloads of schoolchildren who visit campus each year, lining up on the sidewalk outside Smothers, playing and eating lunch.
The program has been around for more than a decade and welcomes more than 10,000 area schoolchildren to Pepperdine each year. A majority of the students are from under-served communities. The performances are free, and the ARTSReach program also pays for school-bus transportation for nearly half of the visiting schools.
Carol Kmiec is the Frederick R. Weisman Museum assistant and the arts education coordinator for the Center for the Arts. Kmiec said her excitement for the program stems from its ability to make connections with the young students and open them up to new art experiences.
“Many of the kids haven’t seen live performances,” Kmiec said. “They walk into the theater and they ask, ‘Where is the big screen?’”
The program strives to do more than the average field trip, Kmiec said.
“They’re expecting to get out of school and come here,” she said. “But when it’s a really great performance it’s breathtaking and fabulous.”
ARTSReach offers two morning performances at 10 and 11:30, each lasting about 45 to 60 minutes. Smothers is usually packed with about 400 to 500 students for each show.
Museum exhibitions are becoming a bigger part of the program as well, Kmiec said.
The ARTSReach Program is supported by the Center for the Arts Guild. Kmiec described the women in the Guild as “angels” who devote their time to fund raising, coordinating an end-of-the-year auction and even serving as ushers for the children.
The Guild states its mission is to “ensure the future vitality of the arts at Pepperdine by developing new audiences and new sources of revenue for the Center.”
The Guild’s primary focus is to support the ARTSReach Program, and, because of its efforts, the program is available to schools for free.
The ARTSReach Program asks performers who are already slated to perform in Smothers if they will do a shortened program for the children. Kmiec said most artists are happy to do it, because it provides them with another rehearsal to do sound and lighting checks. The artists also love to make the children happy, she added.
After each performance, there is a question and answer session with the performers.
Kmiec, who leads the Q&A session, said the time the students get to interact with the performers is her favorite part.
Besides providing young children with an opportunity to experience the arts, the ARTSReach program also serves as a great marketing tool for Pepperdine, Kmiec said. She said the college students walking through campus often impress the visiting students. Being on campus encourages them that it is possible to go to college, Kmiec said.
“The experience makes college so do-able for them,” Kmiec said. “It’s planting the seed for college.”
To remind the students of their exp-erience at Pepperdine, bright or-ange pencils emblazoned with the school logo are handed out to the children as they leave the theater.
Kmiec also said the children love to interact with Pepperdine students who say hello or stop to talk and answer their questions.
Many of the students leave Pepperdine wanting to come back for school, Kmiec said. This is especially true for the high school students who visit.
While the ARTSReach Program mostly serves students in kindergarten through eighth-grade, high schoolers are now being added to the program’s audience.
Cathy DeCecco, a fourth-grade teacher at Piru Elementary School in Piru, Calif., approximately 46 miles northeast of Malibu, recently took her class to an ARTSReach program. Her class, along with three others made up of third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, attended the first program of the semester: a jazz concert featuring recording artist and pianist Lisa Hilton.
DeCecco described Piru as being a “small, pretty rural community” and said that going to Malibu was a big adventure for her students. She also said the students loved the performance, especially because many of them are involved in the band program at school.
“It really made an impact on them to see instruments played like that,” DeCecco said. “Some said they had never been to a concert before. Even the whole jazz experience was new to the kids. Being exposed to jazz was a neat thing for them.”
DeCecco said she did not know much about jazz and the whole experience was exciting for everyone including the students, faculty and chaperones.
Just being on campus made a huge impact on the children as well, DeCecco said.
“They loved seeing the college students, saying hi to them and asking questions,” she said. “It made an abstract idea of going to college more concrete.”
Kmiec said she enjoys reading thank-you notes from the children.
“It couldn’t be a nicer program,” Kmiec said. “It couldn’t be more fulfilling.”
10-27-2005
