Illinois Arts Education Week 2010 Poster Contest Winner

This year's poster contest winner is a student from Wood Oaks Jr HS,in Northbrook. This student, along with second, third, honorable mentions, and a featured school, will be honored at the Governor's Mansion this March in Springfield. A printed poster from this winning artwork will be distributed to all public and private schools in Illinois a week before Illinois Art Education Week March 15th -21st 2010.

Arts Alive 2009: Co-Equal Integration of the Arts

Our fourth annual IAAE “Arts Alive in the Classroom” professional development seminar in Princeton (July 21-22) was another successful event. Participants rotated through sessions on integrating all four arts areas into different classroom subjects at both the elementary and high school level. For the first time graduate credit was offered through Aurora University. Tuesday evening Steve Leaver, of Imagination Theater, led participants in a drama session at the library, before attending "The Laramie Project," performed by members of the Festival 56 theater company. Wednesday began with Roberta Volkmann (bottom center) leading a session on ways of integrating the arts, then sessions in drama (Jan Booth, not pictured), music (David Larkin, not pictured), visual art (Sheila Heth, lower left) and dance (Becky Slettum, lower right).

Reagan Middle School 2009 Featured School

Reagan Middle School in Dixon was the Featured School Awardee in the 2009 Illinois Arts Week Poster Contest. Deb Thompson, the art teacher, said, "I have the Featured Student art work on display at The Next Picture Show.  They had a reception there Sunday evening after [a] concert.....  The musicians are from various Chicago entities, The Lyric Opera, Chicago Symphonies and The Metropolis.  The performers went gaga over my student art work with one wanting to buy four pieces and have one of them be the cover art for their new CD."