Tag Archives: 171 cedar arts center

Motion with an E

By Carly Nichols, Chelsea Ambrose, and April Hortman

Motion plays in integral part in our daily lives.  For many cultures around the world and throughout history, this has taken the form of dance, and has been the foundation of building friendships and community.  This type of connection often sparks another form of motion: E-motion.  Emotions, too, are entangled in our lives; the things we do, the places we go, the people we meet.  During the final programming week of the Garden of Fire, youth had the opportunity to experience motion, with an E.

CareFirst partnered with 171 Cedar Arts, their artist, Vicki Rosettie, and The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes with their artists, Pat and Kathleen Kane, for week five of the Garden of Fire.  Through the dance sessions, the kids heard and participated in traditional Irish dance, and better understood the origins of dance from many other countries.

Dance is a form of motion that is used to not only remain active and build connections with others, but can help us relate to the e-motions we feel.  What do we feel when we watch someone dance?  Is that different from how we feel when we dance ourselves?  How does it feel if we don’t express our emotions?  How can motion help us express how we feel and improve coping?  These questions and more were explored together and helped the youth better understand the power of physical expression.

 

CareFirst Grief Services Team

Carly Nichols, Chelsea Ambrose, April Hortman

STEM to STEAM

At this point in our history, educational priorities are focused on STEM: science, technology, engineering and math. This is a lopsided view of values in education. We need to encourage our school districts and educators to prioritize STEAM: science, technology, engineering, ART and math.

Artwork is the application of many of these other areas of education. Artists deal with physics and chemistry because they work with materials that have specific properties and limits. They deal with mathematics as they confront geometry, measurements and mechanics. Technology and engineering are utilized as they are in every other arena of production – the thing produced must work! It must be stable and function.

Artwork has been devalued as impractical. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet, at the same time, artwork is creative.  It can be fanciful. This should not be used to denigrate art, but rather to reveal what it has to offer to other disciplines. Engineers and scientists must be creative. They must be inventive. Like artists, they must explore the boundaries of what has already been done to see what might be done.

Education must encourage creativity in all its forms. This will help our children build a world that can address unforeseen challenges including repercussions from climate change, population pressures and changing social, political, and environmental situations. Now, more than ever, we need our artists to give us the vision – a practical vision – for the future.

The students involved in the Garden of Fire are not worried about any of this. They are simply learning and having fun. It is our job to think about this on their behalf.

Connie Sullivan-Blum
Executive Director of The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes