LYME-OLD LYME — Lyme-Old Lyme High School and Middle School students are encouraged to complete a survey prior to March 26 to help shape summer art programming options.
The Sustainable Teams of Old Lyme and Lyme are leading this effort to understand student interest and then to help facilitate creating summer arts programming. The arts are broadly defined to include not only visual arts, but also dance, creative writing, film, and music.
Sustainable Old Lyme and Sustainable Lyme are working together to create this new initiative as one of many actions Sustainable CT endorses as an equitable, community-building initiative. The process of creating the program begins with a survey of what Lyme and Old Lyme youth are interested in seeing, and then, if they wish, they can help create the programming.
“Sustainable CT is highly focused on building initiatives that are inclusive and equitable,” according to Old Lyme’s Cheryl Poirier, who is facilitating the process along with Lyme representative Liz Frankel.
Poirier explained, “We are very intent on learning why some students may not take part in summer arts opportunities, whether it be a belief that they don’t have the financial resources, or the confidence, or maybe they don’t have time with jobs or family obligations.”
She added, “This inclusive process will give students the chance to tell us what they would be interested in and then help them create opportunities they can take advantage of during the summer.”
“In addition, there are often summer arts programming already in place, but students may not be aware of what’s out there,” Frankel said, noting, “We want also to connect students to existing opportunities in Lyme and Old Lyme, while augmenting that with new complementary programming.”
Depending on student feedback, the initiative may look like an artist mentoring program, workshops, open studio space, or a thematic project that everyone participates in collectively via their own choice of medium.
The student survey is available at https://forms.gle/wQ63Cvv45Aum4QQ38 and closes Friday, March 26. Following that, a March 31 roundtable discussion will take place among students interested in the planning phase along with artists in the two towns.
A fundraising effort to cover program costs or scholarships (all dependent on the shape the programming takes) will likely take place in late Spring.
To learn more, contact Liz Frankel at [email protected] or Cheryl Poirier at [email protected].
To learn more about Sustainable CT, visit SustainableCT.org.