City Lore's School Projects: Introduction

Sample Residencies and Price Lists

Bring a City Lore residency to your school !

Explore the possibility of contracting City Lore to tailor an artist residency for your school or district. Residencies are often supplemented with multimedia materials from our CARTS Catalog, technology, and staff development services. To discuss our programs and prices, email or call City Lore's School Programs Manager, 1-800-333-5982.

City Lore is an authorized New York City vendor with Board of Education contracts to provide direct student services, staff development, and web-based technology services to New York City schools. Currently we are partners in several school wide arts infusion programs in schools throughout New York City, supported by The Empire State Partnership Program and The Center for Arts Education.

City Lore's NYC Board of Education Vendor # is CIT-040, our Direct Services Contract # is 9102401, and our Professional Development Contract # is 9201199.

City Lore partners with schools to explore cultures and communities through the arts and humanities. In addition to single workshops, we conduct 8-to-20 week artist residencies that bring accomplished teaching artists into the classroom. We also provide teachers with in-school staff development in the areas of folklore, history and culture for integration across the disciplines.

All City Lore residencies foster student awareness of traditional arts in their own lives and in the lives of others, encourage students to see the arts as a powerful means for expressing their ideas, and integrate the arts into other curriculum areas, such as social studies and language arts
. City Lore residencies provide extended opportunities for students and teachers to learn from:

  • Folk artists who teach the music, dance, theater, or crafts from their cultural traditions,

  • Fine artists who help students draw on their own family and community traditions as a source for artistic self-expression, and

  • Specialists in folklore, history, and cultural studies who help students and teachers explore cultures and communities through the arts and humanities.

Our artist residencies bring experienced teaching artists and students together to explore cultures and communities through the arts. Through our artist residencies, students work with folk artists from many cultural backgrounds to learn traditional music, dance, theater, and crafts and to explore the role and meaning of the arts in their communities. They also work with fine artists to investigate their own family and community traditions as a source for artistic creations. Our goal in these programs is to foster student awareness of the role of traditional arts in their own lives and in the lives of others and to encourage them to see the arts as a powerful means for expressing their ideas.

Fifth graders at PS 11, Woodside, Queens display the masks they made during a Mexican papel picado residency.
All City Lore residencies involve:

Creative planning time for teaching artists and classroom teachers
. Planning meetings help foster a collaborative relationship between artist and teacher and insure that the residency experience supports the teacher’s instructional goals for students.
Experiential, hands-on learning with a practicing artist and an art form. Through our residencies, students work with practicing artists who share not only their arts expertise, but their life experiences as practicing artists and, for our folk arts residencies, their experiences in the cultures whose arts they teach. Students also work with the materials, tools, and techniques of the art form to make and create works of art.
Cooperative, collaborative activities. City Lore residencies engage students both in individual and group work. We help students develop collaborative, cooperative skills through group games and cooperative group roles.
Emphasis on process. City Lore residencies emphasize process over product, involving students in every stage of creating and performing art, from the initial brainstorming, to refining ideas, to polishing the final work for presentation.
Interdisciplinary approach. City Lore residencies can be integrated across the curriculum as well as taught as separate arts disciplines.
Reflection and assessment. City Lore residencies provide opportunities for students and teachers to reflect on their work and assess their own learning throughout the residency.
A culminating activity. Culminating activities, where students present or perform their work for their peers and invited guests, give students an opportunity to present a finished piece and learn from an audience’s response to their work.





See our Best Practices