Photo Friday!

Each year at Big Thought, staff members draw a name out of a hat and decorate that coworker's cube. This fun activity allows us all a chance to surprise our fellow employees with our creativity. Here are pics of some of this year's excellent decorations. Happy Holidays to one and all!

Get Involved

Looking for things to do this holiday season? Try giving back to your favorite nonprofits! Donate, Volunteer, get Hired - the possibilities are endless. These links will take you to places where you can do those things for us, but be sure to check out our 70+ arts & cultural partners, too. Every nonprofit is in need of help for the holidays and we truly appreciate the generosity and support of our community!

Photo Friday!

In honor of the second DaVerse Lounge event - happening at the Backbeat Cafe in Dallas TONIGHT! - here are some fantastic pics taken by Delilah from Besitos Photography. Looking for something to do this Friday evening? Come down to Backbeat (at 300 N. Akard Street in Dallas) at 7:30 pm to see some incredible kids express themselves through spoken word. As always, the students will be accompanied by the band Melody Memory, and Will Richey from Journeyman Ink will be hosting. See you there!

Get to Know: Library Live!

Library Live! has been a part of our program lineup for 16 years. This free monthly pre-literacy program takes place in every Dallas Public Library branch, where Big Thought artists present interactive, educational and culture-based literacy activities for children and their families through music, dance, storytelling and visual art.

This year, Library Live! is sponsored by Target, a corporation known for its generosity and dedication to community giving. The program is overseen by Ann Symns, Big Thought's Program Operations Manager. Each month, Ann books different artists for each of the 26 branches of the Dallas Public Library. Just in the past month, preschoolers in Dallas have had the chance to make a song with musician Doc Gibbs, practice yoga with Lynn Moon, learn about nursery rhymes with Dorayne Breedlove and much more.

Library Live! is one of our most important programs because it is meant for children at a critical developmental age - and their parents and caregivers. The techniques taught in each program are replicable by parents, so the learning continues long after the families have left the library. Thanks to the generosity of Target and the hard work of our Big Thought artists and staff like Ann, we are able to offer a pre-literacy program to the children of Dallas that will help them develop the critical skills they need to succeed in life.

Photo Friday!

Photo Friday returns! Here are some more FANTASTIC canvases included in the Barneys holiday window art installation. These are pieces painted by the phenomenal after-school students at Long Middle School in Dallas. Which one is your favorite?

Looking for a good job? We've got plenty! Check out www.bigthought.org/jobs for part-time, full-time and internship opportunities.

Have a Witty Holiday!

Please extend a hearty "Welcome Back" to our After-School guest-blogger, Judy Danielson! Judy's kiddos have been hard at work getting ready for the holidays at Mills Elementary. Here's a sneak peek at what they've been up to this month:

Last week was another week of adventure and learning in Thriving Minds After-School Program at Mills Elementary. On Monday, fourth and fifth graders worked on their team building skills. All of the students have been writing their own short plays and are doing an outstanding job. Kindergarten and first grade made turkeys from oranges and felt pieces. Second and third grade had Mad Science on Wednesday and learned about optical illusions. The children have been earning tickets for good behavior, following directions, being a good leader, being kind, etc. On Friday we had our Reward Store, where my office turns into a Chuck E. Cheese-like store where the children can exchange their tickets for prizes ranging from candy to pencils to stickers to Hot Cheetos! For some, it's the only time they have their own "money" to spend and the decision-making process can be brutal. It is a great incentive and in a roundabout kind of way, a math lesson to figure out how many prizes you can get for your tickets.

On Saturday evening, I gathered some friends and we headed off to Barneys New York at NorthPark Center to see the "Have a Witty Holiday" window art. Our afterschool students at Mills participated in a project with Barneys to provide art for their Holiday Windows. Under the direction of artist and instructor Junanne Peck, the children painted canvases of the funniest person in their lives, or the person who makes them laugh. The visual presentation of the children's paintings is outstanding. The kids all did such good work and Barneys has done a fabulous job displaying their work.

I am so proud of my kids, and people were stopping to look in the windows! How cool is that? Of course, like any proud Mother Hen, I let people know that my afterschool kids created the paintings. Most of the salespeople in Barneys now know me and all about Thriving Minds After-School, too. I encourage all of you to go to Barneys and see the windows. I know you will be touched. I can't wait to share all the pictures I took with my kids and their families!

Judy Danielson
Community Site Manager, Mills Elementary
Thriving Minds After-School



*Editor's note: The Barneys window displays of the children's art from Mills, Tatum Elementary and Long Middle School will be up throughout the holiday season. Stop and take a look while you're doing your Christmas shopping - it's quite a sight to see!

A few EXTRA-special events, part 2

Our journey continued with a weekend of support preceded by a lovely champagne-and-hors-d'oeuvres kickoff party at the brand new Louis Vuitton flagship store at NorthPark Center. The event was hosted by Kimberly Schlegel-Whitman, Daniel Lalonde, President of Louis Vuitton North America and Patrick McCarthy, Chairman and Editorial Director of W Magazine. Our Manager of Events and Volunteers, Shelly Bell, said, "The party was really great; we had a lot of Board members and donors there who truly enjoyed it. Everyone chatted about Big Thought and had a wonderful time!" Part of the proceeds from the full weekend's sales are being donated to us so that we can continue our programs for the children and families of Dallas.

Finally, self-taught Dallas artist Chris Judy and his team chose Big Thought as a beneficiary for the launch of his new set of giclee prints. The party, held at Bella Restaurant in the Uptown area, was well-attended. Patrons were energetic and excited to learn about Big Thought and see Judy's latest artwork.

We are so grateful to have been chosen to be a part of all these wonderful events. Thank you to all who appreciate our work and are inspired to help us continue making imagination a part of everyday learning. Stay tuned for more on the art exhibit in the Barneys New York windows next week!

A few EXTRA-special events

We've been busy these past few weeks, dashing from place to place around the city with our hands and vehicles full of children's art, Big Thought brochures and directional signage! Here's a recap of a few places we've been - be sure to join our mailing list if you want to receive special event invitations from us.

Our slew of events started with our delivery of more than 200 freshly-painted canvases like the one on the left to Barneys New York in NorthPark Center for their holiday windows - more on that next week!

Then we moved on down Oak Lawn Avenue on November 5th to Dragon Street in the Dallas Design District, because we were chosen as a beneficiary of the annual Design on Dragon gallery event. It was a beautiful, warm night and the galleries were full of happy patrons exploring.

Those lovely folks showered us with art supplies (some were even gift-wrapped!) and cash donations for the children and families impacted through our programs. We are so grateful to the galleries that participated and to Modern Luxury for choosing us to benefit from this wonderful event!

Stay tuned for the rest of our jam-packed schedule, which will be posted tomorrow afternoon.

(Belated) Photo Friday!

Better late than never, eh? Here's a special Photo Friday slideshow of screen grabs from the DaVerse Lounge performance at Backbeat Cafe last Friday. People of all ages showed up to the open-mic spoken word showcase, hosted by Big Thought artist Will Richey and including backup by the band Melody Memory. For more information check out the Daverse Lounge MySpace Music page - and join us at Backbeat the second Friday of December for the next performance!

5 Things We Know About Quality

Quality is perhaps the most important characteristic of a successful arts education and creative learning program. While it is a major accomplishment to increase the raw numbers of creative learning opportunities throughout a city as large as Dallas, the opportunities must also be high-quality to have an impact...thus that is an area on which we've focused our Research & Assessment lens for the last 2 years.

1. Get out your yardstick. Though it may seem too qualitative or subjective, quality of arts education and creative learning MUST be measured. One of the greatest contributions of Thriving Minds' work to date is the design of both a framework for understanding the dimensions of quality teaching and learning and a set of tools that measure it year to year.
   
2. It takes a village. Our effort to examine quality in this rigorous way has been aided by a team of nearly 50 practitioners and researchers, including local teachers, arts organization representatives, Big Thought staff and national experts in various creative learning subjects. It has been based on over one hundred observations followed by discussions and further refinements of the tools. In short, measurement of quality takes the participation and collaboration of many, many people, all committed to securing the best possible education for the city's children.
   
3. The more you know. High-quality learning opportunities require high-quality instruction. In order for today's teachers and instructors to be prepared and capable of teaching at a high level, they need to pursue continuing education and professional development. Data from the quality panels indicate that in-school and community instructors alike need to build more time for creative choice make as well as assessment and reflection into their curriculum. Professional development workshops have been designed to provide strategies to promote more of this type of teaching and learning.
   
4. Take time to make time. Another aspect of quality is in the area of teaching or instructional time. Quality panelists often found that instructors feel pressed for time and often this is why they feel unable to open their lesson to students input and creative choices. Thus, students are limited to always following instructions and never having time to innovate. Armed with this information, the Thriving Minds After-School Program decided to lengthen creative learning from 45- to 90-minutes instructional blocks.
   
5. The results are in. One of the most compelling studies we've done involves the creative work of students involved in ArtsPartners. Student writing was collected and compared before and after participating in community creative learning programs chosen to support classroom curriculum. Community programs strengthened students’ achievement. Here is an example of the change in one student’s writing, as illustrated in our research publication “Enriching Minds, Growing our Future.”

Photo Friday!

Our creative staff sure knows how to celebrate Halloween with some CRAZY costumes! Check out a few of our pics from our Halloween party last Friday:

The Case for After-School

Eighteen months ago, Dallas ISD and Big Thought began forming plans for a free after-school program for the elementary and middle schools in the district. Recognizing that it was a great complement to existing Thriving Minds community efforts, Big Thought began developing the logistics of the program and pursuing funding. We received a 21st Century Learning Center grant from the Texas Education Agency in 2008, hired more than 100 new full- and part-time employees and set up shop in 20 elementary and middle school sites all over the city in October 2008. Now in year 2, the Thriving Minds After-School Program offers free after-school care including homework help, academic tutoring and creative enrichment programs from 3-6pm, Monday through Friday, to 2,000 students in Dallas.

There's been a lot of buzz about after-school lately, with the release of the Afterschool Alliance's America After 3pm data. Despite 26% of Texas schoolchildren still being left unsupervised between the hours of 3 and 6pm (up from 24% in 2004 and tied with the national average), Texas still ranks in the top 10 states as far as after-school supply and demand.  However, of those top 10, Texas is one of only 3 not meeting the after-school demand with a statewide program, which places more responsibility on the individual organizations - like the YMCA, Dallas Afterschool Network, and ourselves, with the Thriving Minds After-School Program - to meet the demand. Currently, 51% of Texas schoolchildren not in after-school would be likely to participate if it were available to them; that's well over a million students statewide.

Though an increasing number of parents and students recognize the need for after-school care, cost of the program and transportation issues are consistent barriers to access. And families are not the only ones recognizing this need: David Kunkle, chief of the Dallas Police Department, wrote an Op-Ed article for the Dallas Morning News recently about the benefits of after-school programming. Kunkle sees it as a deterrent for three important issues facing Dallas students: dropout rates, juvenile crime and the participation in risky behaviors such as drugs and gangs. Here are some of the things he pointed out:

• Every $1 spent on after-school saves taxpayers $8 to $12 that would later be spent on crime, welfare and other costs.
• Right now, 100,000 Dallas County children between the ages of 5 and 13 are left unsupervised after school, and those kids are less likely to graduate.
• The students who need after-school the most - in low-income areas - are still the least likely to receive it, due to space issues.

Considering the current state of the economy and the fact that many parents are having to work multiple jobs just to stay afloat, it is more important than ever that our children are receiving proper after-school care and supervision. Thriving Minds After-School is devoted to providing a safe place for students to spend those critical hours between 3 and 6pm, as well as offering new opportunities that enhance their classroom learning. To learn more about our after-school program or any of the others listed here, visit the links above. Also, if you have the time and inclination, look into volunteering to help out at a local program.

Photo Friday!

Photo Friday! Featuring pictures from the Lights On Afterschool celebration at the Mills Elementary School. Students in the Thriving Minds After-School Program shared creative learning activities with their parents and siblings.

Guest Blog - Judy Danielson, Community Site Manager for Mills Elementary

Please welcome Judy Danielson, our Thriving Minds After-School guest blogger! Judy is in her second year as the Community Site Manager for the after-school program at Mills Elementary School in Dallas ISD. We will feature her posts every week or so to keep you apprised of what's going on!

We had another fun week in the Thriving Minds Afterschool program at Mills Elementary. Fourth and Fifth graders talked and wrote about why they love themselves. For some, this task was difficult. We did lots of coaching about positivity and the great assets we all have.

Last week my students finished painting portraits of the person in their lives who makes them laugh. They did some outstanding work. You will be able to see their work displayed in the windows of Barney’s department store at Northpark Mall. The paintings will be on display after Nov. 9. They all worked very hard and I am so proud of them! I got lots of hugs and high fives this week. Also, several new pieces of artwork for my office, magic marker stains on my pants, a shirt damp with tears and runny noses, and one apple. The perks that come with this job are outstanding! And yes, we do use tons of hand sanitizer.

We finally had one sunny afternoon for some of the kids to play outside. Fresh air and outdoor play make all of us – kids and staff – feel so much better. Second and third graders planted some flowers for their room and they will record their growth. They also talked and journaled about ecosystems. Kindergarten and first grade played Alphabet Bingo. It’s a fun sort-of-back-door-way to work on letter recognition and letter sounds. They are happily learning and don’t realize it.

On Thursday night we had a Family Fun Night celebration in recognition of national “Lights On Afterschool” night. Our families had fun eating dinner together and doing some fun art projects. I love the support my parents show me and the thanks I get from them. Many parents know that their children need a safe and nurturing place to go after school. One of my students, Necovia, cried the other day because her mom came to pick her up too early. She wasn’t finished with her painting, was having fun and wasn’t ready to go home yet. Little things like that let me know I’m in the right place.

-Judy Danielson

 Community Site Manager, Mills Elementary

 Thriving Minds After-School Program

Photo Friday!

The October 23rd Photo Friday features pics from the Lights On Afterschool event that happened at Tatum Elementary. The Tatum students studied Hispanic cultures in honor of Hispanic Cultural Heritage Month, and then did a program for the community in which they performed an Aztec story and accompanying dance and did a fashion show full of Hispanic cultural fashions. Check out the slideshow below - and stay tuned for next week's feature on after-school!

Photo Friday!

This week's Photo Friday pics are from the enrichment activities at the Thriving Minds After-School Program at Mills Elementary School in Dallas. The After-School program runs Monday through Friday from 3-6pm, and offers FREE homework help, tutoring and creative learning at 21 elementary and middle school sites across the Dallas ISD.

Dallas ArtsPartners kicks off the 2009-2010 schoolyear with a BANG!

Big Thought has been coordinating curriculum-enhancing programs for Dallas ISD elementary schools every year since 1998 with Dallas ArtsPartners, an innovative partnership including the City of Dallas, Dallas ISD and dozens of arts & cultural organizations all across North Texas. Through Dallas ArtsPartners (AP), we provide training and manage funding for the programs and help link elementary school teachers to more than 60 arts & cultural partners, in order for them to provide their students with educational arts experiences.

To help all those DISD elementary school teachers, we rely on 15 part-time staffers, mostly retired educators - known as the AP Representatives. This year, all 15 are returning veterans with lots of practice running workshops and fielding questions from the teachers at the schools they represent. Those 15 Reps are backed up in the office by our awesome and oh-so-efficient AP team. These capable folks train the AP Representatives and the 156 Site Coordinators; verify the vouchers for funding - over 1500 so far this schoolyear, with more to go; and confirm the programs with the schools and the arts & cultural providers. WOW!

Since September 2, the AP Reps have been out in the field at the schools they represent, doing full-day workshops to help the teachers finalize their programs and create vouchers for funding. 95 workshops have been done as of right now, with the remainder to come before the beginning of November. This has kept the AP team back at the office busy answering questions and troubleshooting issues, since a day could have as many as 10 different workshops happening all at the same time!

This year also marks the 3rd year of a collaboration between Dallas ArtsPartners and the Fine Arts Department of the Dallas ISD to give every single fourth-grader in the DISD a special educational tour of the Dallas Museum of Art. This is an incredible opportunity - and that program kicks off next week with the first fourth-grade tour.

For more on our programs and partnerships, see Our Programs on the Big Thought website.

Photo Friday!

"It's beginning to look a lot like..." Well, not yet, but we're already gearing up for the holidays! Students in the Thriving Minds After-School program are already hard at work on portraits that will be among those displayed in the windows at Barneys New York in Dallas' North Park Center this holiday season!

The pictures below were taken at Mills Elementary on Thursday - stay tuned for more, and check out the finished product in the Barneys windows in December.

Our Theme Song

If you've been to our new website with your speakers turned on, you've probably heard a delightful little ditty that accompanies the flash banner at the top of the page. That music was written for us by one of our AWESOME new Board members, Ross Vick. Ross is a singer/songwriter - here's his MySpace Music page and his website. He tours a lot - catch him at White Rock Coffee on October 28th - but despite that, he found time to write us this special tune!

We've got lots of plans for our new signature music, so make sure you stay tuned to our PSAs, YouTube videos and other media to hear more - and BIG thank you to Ross for creating such an awesome piece of music just for US! Haven't heard it yet? Head over to the Big Thought website to take a listen and learn a bit about what we do!

Photo Friday!

We had an awesome - and busy! - week. Enjoy these photos from our Library Live! Kickoff celebrations at the Bachman Lake, Martin Luther King and Skillman Southwestern Library Branches earlier this week. The children of Dallas enjoyed four extra-special performances, snacks and a bag of books to take home. BIG thanks to Target, generous sponsor of Library Live!

New Website Feature: "5 Things"

If you've been to our new website recently, you may have noticed a fun new gadget at the bottom of our homepage. Our staff, board, artists and providers are all residents, parents and students just like you, so we thought we'd get our heads together and try to help you find fun, creative ways to spend your days. Rather than throw ALL that information into one big list, we decided to break it up into smaller lists of "5 Things" - 5 Things to DO, 5 Things to TRY...you get the picture.

Then we decided to take it one step further and add some unique content. To that end, we've had our staff collaborate on a how-to guide for museum visiting; had several Board members help us make a list of ways to advocate for the arts; and created a primer for the new SLANT 45 program. You can check all of those lists out in our Archive.

This week's topic is 5 Things To Do This Weekend in Dallas - including visiting the State Fair (we even found deals to make it cheaper!), riding on the McKinney Streetcars through uptown and checking out programs and classes as well as books at the Dallas Public Library. We're sure you've found plenty of fun (& free!) things to do in Dallas, so we want to open this one up to collaboration from YOU: what are YOUR weekend family plans? Got anything free or low-cost that you're attending? Let us know - and stay tuned for next week's topic: 5 Things To Write, featuring writing activities and exercises used by Big Thought artist Will Richey!

Photo Friday - SLANT 45 Announcement pics!

Former Pres. George Bush, Emmitt Smith, Jordin Sparks and hundreds of DFW Metroplex middle-school students! Enjoy!

Slant 45 kicks off with a BANG!

There's a new DFW service-learning partnership under way - with Big Thought at the helm!
We were chosen by the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee to form an unprecedented yearlong education partnership. Named Slant 45, this project promises to be one of the largest community-wide service-learning programs for children in U.S. history.

We kicked off Slant 45 on September 21st with a press conference at Cowboys Stadium. In attendance were Super Bowl MVPs and famous Cowboys football players like Roger Staubach, Daryl Johnston, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Cliff Harris. The football greats were joined by Former President George Bush and his wife, Laura, NFL Senior Director of Events Frank Supovitz, Richard Holt, President of Bank of America Dallas, North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee CEO Bill Lively and our very own Gigi Antoni, President/CEO of Big Thought - as well as several hundred DFW Metroplex students anxious to learn what this new project is all about (and get some free lunch from Chick-fil-a!). There was even a special guest - American Idol 2007 winner Jordin Sparks sang a few songs and energized the crowd!

More about the project:

• Slant 45 stands for "Service-Learning Adventures in North Texas," in cooperation with Super Bowl 45 - and it's also the term for a popular play used by the Dallas Cowboys in the 90s!
• The purpose of Slant 45 is to inspire local kids to research community service opportunities in their neighborhoods and submit a project. What makes it a service-learning project is the opportunity that those students will have to reflect on what they've accomplished and the impact it's had not only on the community, but also on themselves.
• Big Thought is developing a curriculum and method for researching, choosing and reflecting on projects. It will be available for students and group leaders when the project actually begins in early January 2010.
• Slant 45 is mainly for student groups and classes around grades 3-5, though other age groups are certainly welcome. We hope to affect 20,000+ students all across the DFW Metroplex, inspiring them to commit to upwards of 45,000 hours of community service.

Want to know even MORE? We've collected articles and blog posts about the announcement on our News & Media page, and the Slant 45 website is also available with more information on how to get involved.

Help us help kids to make a BIG difference in their community!

Going GREEN!

Big Thought is going GREEN! In an effort to save the environment, we have cut down on our printing budget by making more of our interactions available online. Join our mailing list to receive e-newsletters and special email event invitations; order programs through our online catalog; and visit us elsewhere on the web - like twitter, facebook, MySpace, YouTube and flickr - to hear the latest news, see photos and video and give us feedback!

Photo Friday!

Time for another Photo Friday! Today's slideshow: Creative Solutions summer '09 students performing at Thanksgiving Square.

Day 1 of Thriving Minds After-School

The Thriving Minds After-School program kicked off its second year Aug. 31 at 20 Dallas ISD elementary and middle schools. The program offers free after-school care to more than 2,000 students in grades K-8, and was a huge hit last year. Each school is staffed with a Community Site Manage, Assistant Site Manager and Creative Site Guides who provide students with homework help, academic tutoring and fun enrichment activities.

We’ll soon launch an additional Thriving Minds After-School program in South Dallas through generous funding from Chase. Expect to see Thriving Minds After-School programs at every Dallas ISD elementary and middle school over the next several years.

Check out Day 1 of the after-school program at Twain Elementary:

Reflections on the Conference Call with Arne Duncan

It was exciting to participate in the conference call arranged by The NAMM Foundation and the Support Music Coalition on Tuesday, August 18th, with the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

Arts education advocates have become used to hearing leadership at agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Education Partnership or Americans for the Arts speak on the value and critical need for arts education in our country. But I had to pinch myself as I listened to the United States Secretary of Education emphasize the national Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)which defines arts as a core subject, how arts play critical roles in extended day education, and also about how the arts have significant impact in the developmental and learning process for all children.

He reiterated ways that school districts can use funding from the Department of Education to support arts education in many ways. Examples are Title I funds, Title II funds, the Department’s grants for model development and dissemination – and the list goes on. Equally important are the funds that are sent to state governments to support arts education. Secretary Duncan emphasized the importance of advocating to our state agencies; support for arts education must be strong at the state and local level as well.

Big Thought was a sponsor of the second Dallas Arts Advocacy Day event just two days after that phone call with Secretary Duncan. We met and conversed with arts advocates and administrators from all over the city to discuss new and better ways to encourage our patrons and program participants to advocate for the arts in their lives. Economic impact studies done on the arts both nationally and locally make their value plain to see; it’s now up to us to use what we’ve learned to inspire others to take up the charge.

Nancy Webb
Vice President, Organizational Advancement
Big Thought

Photo Friday!

Another Photo Friday Blog! These pics are from the TM Summer Camp at Titche Elementary School.

Guest Blog - Gigi Antoni, Big Thought President/CEO

Here's something exciting that we've discovered - for the past two years Barry's Blog and Update from the Western States Arts Federation has compiled a list of the 25 Most Powerful and Influential Leaders in the Nonprofit Arts Sector. After reading last year’s list, I was excited to see who would be represented this year. As a nonprofit administrator, my curiosity was naturally piqued as I sought out peers and mentors, colleagues and friends. The list is, as the author readily admits, incomplete. But the actual names on the list weren’t what impressed me most—what struck me is that it exists at all.


As a society, we like to list things very much. We want to know the best cities to live in, the best colleges to attend, the most powerful people in television, business and in the world. It seems out of place to list the most powerful leaders in the nonprofit sector, much less the arts nonprofit. Largely, we are less concerned with being included on a list, but instead are professionals that are constantly trying to make a difference in this world.

I saw many adept and profoundly capable colleagues on the list—many of whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with throughout my twenty-plus year tenure—who are indeed making fundamental leaps in the world of nonprofit arts. Bob Lynch, Michael Kaiser, Daniel Windham, Sandra Rupert, Moy Eng, Jonathan Katz, Laura Zucker, Alan Brown, and Rory MacPherson have all personally touched not only my life but Big Thought and the work that it does. Big Thought, like many other nonprofits committed to the arts and creativity, relies on these people as advisors and partners in advancing the arts across the country. Without them, we might not be experiencing today’s successes.

We are in debt to many more, though, like Eric Booth, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Tom Wolf. These ingenious talents offer far more than sound advice to arts administrators and arts organizations the country over. Their work validates a field that is sometimes seen as extraneous and non-essential.

Barry’s list identifies a community, a nationwide consortium of nonprofit arts professionals and advocates that are influencers and provokers of activism. We are not alone! And it’s good to see it, written down somewhere, with names attached. But perhaps more importantly, this list sets a precedent for identification with the people in this field. This year, perhaps only those in the arts nonprofit read Barry’s list. Next year, maybe a few more. The year after, perhaps it’s thousands who want to know more about the work that we do.

Kudos to blogs like these that begin to associate the nonprofit arts with talent, power, and importance.

Gigi Antoni

Photo Blog!

Here's a fun Photo Blog for Friday afternoon - these pics were taken at our Thriving Minds Summer Camp @ Ireland Elementary School.

Supply, Demand & Quality

Supply, demand & quality of creative learning opportunities in the city of Dallas are the focus of much of our research and program assessment & development. We network with families, cultural providers, educators, community organizations and many other partners to determine the following:

1) Supply - what creative learning opportunities are available to the residents in each neighborhood of Dallas?
2) Demand - what creative learning opportunities are the residents in that area asking for?
and
3) Quality - what is the level of quality of the opportunities available?

The Wallace Foundation has a great collection of speeches and presentations on these and related subjects that have been gathered from a organizations nationwide, who, like us, are working to increase the quality and availability of creative learning (and arts education) throughout their cities. You'll find two of our presentations from the annual Americans for the Arts conference among the collection.

Got questions? We're happy to answer 'em - just email us to find out more about what we're learning.

Big Thought's Website: Brand Spankin' New!

We've been working 'round the clock for the last several months, redesigning our website to make it more user-friendly - and it's finally DONE!

Here are some things you may want to check out:
* The Banner contains sections for families, teens & students, educators and partners - those link to pages crafted just for those audiences - you can also get to them by going to www.bigthought.org/athome, www.bigthought.org/school or www.bigthought.org/community.

* Among the many cool additions, the new site features a “5 Things” section which outlines fun and creative activities for children and families.

* If you have a pair of headphones, take a listen to the groovy intro music that Big Thought board member Ross Vick scored just for us.

* We've got special pages for our events (www.bigthought.org/events), jobs (www.bigthought.org/jobs), and Thriving Minds (www.bigthought.org/thrivingminds).

The new site is bright, clean and fun and will make navigation easier for anyone who visits! Take a look: www.bigthought.org.

Advocate for the Arts!

Arts Advocacy Day is upon us (August 20th - register here) and there are plenty of upcoming opportunities for Dallas arts advocates to get involved in! For instance, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm has proposed combining the City’s Office of Cultural Affairs with the Department of Libraries, and the local arts community is banding together against the proposal. Here's an article on the subject that ran in last Sunday's Dallas Morning News. To find a local town hall meeting or other ways you can get involved, click here!

Intern Stephanie checks out the Creative Solutions dress rehearsal!

August 5, 2009
I got to see the dress rehearsal for the Creative Solutions today. I was so excited to see it all come together after sitting through some rehearsals and talking with the kids throughout the program. While there were still a few kinks to work out in the performance and not all of the art was up in the gallery, you can definitely see all the hard work that went into pulling these off.The performance, which is called “The Switch,” showcases all different kinds of talent: dancing, percussion, spoken word poetry, acting, singing. The kids really can do it all. Six of the kids played “angels” and “demons” and they stole the show with their hilarious performance! I was also blown away by the spoken word poetry that was performed. The way that the kids talk about their own lives and the way that they’re channeling their experience into performance is powerful.

The visual art is equally impressive. After spending a couple days in the gallery helping to hang some of the pieces, I actually took the time to step back and really look at the pieces. There's glass work, ceramics, charcoal, watercolor, and acrylic work – a little bit of everything. One of the coolest pieces was a group project of a tiger. It’s an amazing stippling project that took a week to create and the artists were so excited to tell us about their work and how everything was created. Though they’re a little more reserved than some of the performers, you can see their talent and passion just as clearly.I know they’ll all do an amazing job at their first official performance tomorrow!

-Stephanie
ps - check out our mini CS videos at http://tinyurl.com/BTMovie! More to come...

Thriving Minds Summer Camp Wrap-up!

The Thriving Minds Summer Camps were a HUGE hit! Thank you to all who made them possible, especially our dedicated staff of artists, site managers, apprentices and guides who worked with the kids each day and helped them perform their best at the special culminating events - and thanks to Miss Julia E. for guest-blogging about her experience!

Speaking of those special events...we sent a couple cameras out into the city on July 2nd and 31st to record some of those performances - and now we're in the process of creating little wrap-up videos to show you what those kids accomplished.

Check out our YouTube channel for videos from Tatum Elementary and Stockard Middle School and our flickr page for pics from the camp at Mills Elementary - more to come!

Intern Stephanie checks out Creative Solutions

Hi! I’m Stephanie, a student at SMU that's interning here at Big Thought. Last week I had the opportunity to go visit Creative Solutions, a Big Thought program for at-risk teens. Here's what I saw!

For three days I helped a photographer (who currently serves as a Big Thought Board member) as she took portraits of all the kids in the program. I was absolutely blown away by these kids! Having the chance to interact with them and watch them have their pictures taken was amazing. Some of them had never had their portrait taken before! The kids came in two at a time and while one was having their picture taken, the other would crack jokes or make faces to make them laugh. You can just see their personalities shine through the photos and how they interacted with each other and with us. Some were very particular about how they looked in the pictures; others weren’t all that comfortable having a camera lens in their face. But the really amazing part about observing them was seeing that all their energy was going towards whatever project they were working on. Peeking in the visual art studio, hearing a student’s poem, or feeling the drumming from the percussion rehearsal just proved how creativity is really changing and challenging these kids. I can’t wait to attend their final show and see just how far they’ve come!

To give you a taste of what's going on behind the scenes over at SMU with the Creative Solutions students, I made some video clips of the dancers, the visual art kids and the percussion ensemble! Check them out at http://tinyurl.com/BTMovie/.

Stay tuned for more...
-Stephanie

Julia E's Summer Camp Recap - part 3

Tuesday June 30
More rehearsals, more projects, more fun activities! Today in the morning we set off a Diet-Coke-and-Mentos experiment, which consists of reacting small mints with soda and watching the soda erupt. Although some walked away drenched in sugar-free pop, the kids have never been more thrilled by a science experiment! I’m planning on bringing more bottles of Coke tomorrow so that we can do it again. All the children decorated shirts for the play, with their character’s name and whatever other creative designs they could think of. Some of the shirts have too many glittery flowers on them to read the print, we ran out of fabric-paint, and we had several huge paint spills, but the kids definitely had fun and the project was very expressive! Our all-day rehearsals continue. With two days left, I hope we can pull it together!

-Julia E.

A Chance to Pat Ourselves on the Back...

We are SO stoked right now! Big Thought won the Arts Education Award from Americans for the Arts at their conference in Seattle. That is such an honor - plus the award is super-neat! The Arts Education Award is given annually to an organization that is a leader among arts education organizations, especially in the areas of program design and implementation. Congrats to the other award winners - find 'em here - and thank you to Americans for the Arts for giving us this honor!

In other news, our 2008-2009 Board of Directors met for the last time last night. We bid adieu to our fearless Board Chair, Karen Hirschman - and welcome to our incoming Board Chair, Tucker Enthoven. Will you help us make imagination a part of everyday learning in our new fiscal year?

Julia E's Summer Camp Recap - part 2

Tuesday June 23
As we enter the second half of Summer Camp, things are starting to really level out. Every day I have a steady number of kids which always hovers somewhere around 23, with the same kids returning each time. The script is in print, and I figured out the cast list for my class without any meltdowns over role assignments (major and surprising success). Chris’ music class has turned to dancing, which is great, especially for the older children. Thrilled to dance to songs that they recognize, the kids seem really focused and engaged, a welcoming change. Our project for the day: what is your favorite animal in the sky, under the sea, or on the ground. We had several dinosaurs (and a “dinser”), sharks, puppies, and dolphins - which they were enthralled to hear were the smartest animals in the world, after humans. After classes were over, Elliot, another ATA at Conner, organized a camp-wide game of red-light, green-light which was a huge success!We will start rehearsals later this week for the end-of-camp show. Hope everything runs smoothly!

Friday June 26
The weekend again! We ended the week yesterday with a somewhat unproductive rehearsal, but now that we are more organized, we will have a better rehearsal on Monday. All of our instructors communicated and found a way to include every art form in the program; now we just have to straighten out the logistics. Yesterday, while the kids were not needed on stage, I took my group for project free-time, and set everyone up with quiet individual projects. While most of the boys were entertained folding new models of paper airplanes, everyone else found creative busy projects and stayed happy and focused.Chris also put the finishing touches on the two dance routines, and the kids seem to really enjoy them and are getting really good. Now that we're allowing the kids to dance on stage, even those who didn’t feel like participating are jumping in, which is great. The challenge comes in fitting forty antsy children on stage to dance!

-Julia E.
ps - more pics here!

Julia E's Summer Camp Recap - part 1

Hi! I'm Julia E., an Apprentice Teaching Artist from the Thriving Minds Summer Camp at Conner Elementary. I had a great time working with the kids this summer, so when Big Thought asked me to put together a short recap of my time at Conner, I jumped at the chance! What I'll be posting here are my reflections on the process of creating the play the students performed at their culminating event on July 2nd - and some of the fun daily activities we did. I hope you enjoy it: today I'll post a special two-fer for you from week 2 of Camp!

Tuesday June 16
Going into our second week of Thriving Minds Summer Camp at Conner Elementary, the craziness is beginning to settle. I have a sweet group of four and fifth graders, who get better daily as we get to know each other a little bit more. As of now, I am happy to report that the Thriving Minds Summer Camp is a successful program. Our kids participate in four classes throughout the day: theater, drumming, percussion and rhythm, and visual arts, all of which we hope to compose into an end-of-camp show. Because my kids are the oldest bunch at our campus, they can participate in the more difficult activities; today, they excelled at an improv game called Taxi, individually took turns on the big drum set, successfully put together a cohesive rhythm in percussion class, and created still life paintings in art. Also, as a project, I brought in a long sheet of butcher paper for the kids to write and illustrate what they wanted to be when they grow up – my favorites: Batman, FBI agent, a farm man, a skateboard, and a vegetarian (not to be mistaken with a veterinarian). I will be working on the script for the play tonight!

-Julia E.
ps - Click here to see one of my pictures from Conner!

Friday June 19
The script for our end-of-camp show is officially finished! All last week, my class (the older kids) helped Krystal and me think of characters, setting, and plot for their show, and it has all accumulated into a short and sweet medley of fairytale characters (Dorothy, the Cat in the Hat and Tinkerbelle, just to name a few!), set on Fairytale Island. We read the finished play to the kids yesterday, and they seemed pleased. Now we just have to put it into action! More of the same in terms of activites. The children did blind portraits of each other in art class, or drawings where they couldn’t look down at the paper while drawing. The craziness of drawings, with eyes next to chins and teeth inside the ears, was bizarre enough to get the kids laughing at themselves.

-Julia E.
ps - here are some more Conner Camper pics!

Thriving Minds Summer Camp

Imaginations soared as high as the temperatures outdoors in June as we hosted 12 creative arts summer camps for students in grades K-8 across the city. Nearly 1,400 youth participated in the enrichment camps, which ran from June 8-July 2 at Dallas ISD elementary and middle school campuses, as well as the City of Dallas’ Bath House Cultural Center in East Dallas.
Julia E., an Apprentice Teaching Artist at the Conner Elementary camp site, gave us a play-by-play of the finals days of camp, which we're happy to share with you. We'll post a new entry every Monday and Thursday along with photos!

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Well HELLO there...

Nice to see you - so glad you're here!

We're Big Thought, an education partnership nonprofit that coordinates creative learning programming in-school, out-of-school and in the community here in Dallas, TX. You may know that we have been hard at work for 20 years reintroducing the arts to schools in Dallas that dropped those subjects from the curriculum well over 40 years ago.

What you may NOT know is that we are now branching out more and more into out-of-school time and programming in the community....and that's where this blog comes in! Here you'll find some more detail about who we are, what we do and why we do it. We'll also give you the lowdown on our research and what we're doing with the things we're learning from you. Got questions? Check out our website for answers - or email us!