The ArtsLiteracy Project

HISTORY

Founded in 1998 in the Education Department at Brown University, The ArtsLiteracy Project develops curricula and professional development practices based on the premise that linking literacy and the arts creates powerful learning opportunities for students both in core academic subjects and in the arts. The primary curricular framework of ArtsLiteracy is the Performance Cycle, a flexible guiding structure for integrating arts and literacy practices across all disciplines. The ArtsLiteracy Project offers professional development experiences for educators in communities around the world.

The ArtsLiteracy’s lab school in Mexico, Habla: The Center for Language and Culture, pilots ways to fuse language learning with the arts in a community-based setting. Other ArtsLiteracy sites are located in Portland, Maine; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Providence, RI.

In 2005, The ArtsLiteracy Project was invited to the White House to receive the prestigious Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities for “extraordinary work in making a remarkable difference to youth.” In addition the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) identified the ArtsLiteracy Project as one of the ten highest quality arts education organizations in the United States.

Eileen Landay

Eileen Landay was the Clinical Professor of English Education at Brown University, Director of Brown’s MAT Program in English Education and Brown Summer High School. During that time, she co-founded and was faculty director of the ArtsLiteracy Project.

Landay also teaches and consults regionally and nationally on adolescent literacy development, arts integration and English education. Before coming to Brown, she was a teacher of secondary and elementary English, the English Language Arts Consultant for the Maine Department of Education, Chief Reader, Maine Educational Assessment as well as a poet in the schools funded through the Maine Arts Commission.

She holds an M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College and an Ed.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the co-author of A Reason to Read: Linking Literacy and the Arts (Harvard Education Press, 2012).

Kurt Wootton

Kurt Wootton is the co-founder of the ArtsLiteracy Project. As the ArtsLiteracy’s Project co-director, his work in urban schools with diverse populations led him to work in different countries in Latin America, particularly Brazil and Mexico. He is also the co-director of Habla, ArtsLiteracy’s lab school in Merida, Mexico. With a specialty in creative literacy pedagogies, teacher professional development, and organizational change, Wootton works with teachers and administrators helping to design schools and organizations that are creative, meaningful, and welcoming places.

Previously he worked as an urban school reform consultant for the Providence School District and has led literacy initiatives for the Boston Public Schools, the St. Paul Public Schools, the Central Falls School District, and Plan Estratégico de Mérida, Mexico.

Wootton has been called on to offer keynote speeches and workshops in a variety of settings, including Harvard University, Middlebury College, SmART Schools, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Maryland, Senac University in Sao Paulo, the Arts Education Partnership, as well as at numerous conferences. He is the co-author of A Reason to Read: Linking Literacy and the Arts (Harvard Education Press, 2012).