Dear Puffin West Foundation,
Thank you for supporting our students and their remarkable works of sound art for our Listening to the Lower East Side project that worked with 7th and 8th grade Special Education students at PS 140 located on the Lower East Side.
So many wonderful connections were made between students, staff and visitors during this year of work. Our exhibition and Community Listening sessions of sound recordings were a full expression of the breadth of what we have accomplished this year, so please enjoy the pictures and MP3 with our gratitude! The events were attended by students, invited Artists Space staff, PS 140 staff, and parent, friends and families of participating students.
We are celebrating with great joy the admittance into college of five of our EAI graduates who returned to Artists Space to work with us on their college application process, our five Scholastic Art and Writing Awardees, our four CUNY Poetry festival awardees and four of our 8th grade Portfolio students who gained admittance into Art High Schools.
Our long time partners, PS 140 located on the Lower East Side and MS 324 a bi-lingual middle school in Washington Heights are functioning on an 80% shortfall budget and are struggling to provide additional funding for arts programming.
Both populations are more than 80% Hispanic and English Language Learners of newly immigrated families and now more than ever the need to sustain bridges and connections of community are vitally important.
It is our intention to insure that the students of these communities continue to receive our arts programming that is so important for their experience of joy, self-expression, and agency within the cultural climate of NYC.
They are voices that need to be heard by all of us and we have made a passionate committment to supporting them with the time, space and support to develop their creativity and skills of communication.
We sincerely appreciate your interest and support in providing funding for our Listening to the Lower East Side.
So sorry it took us this time to get back to you but our program did not conclude until this June and we wanted to send you a recording and some pictures of some of our concluding events.
Warmly,
Kate Temple
sample sound recording:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a7zIR9R71yYJCJRgmyYrHrhppTkNs21T/view?usp=drive_web
or try the link on dropbox if this does not work:
