City Lore’s education programs engage youth, families, and educators in exploring the role of the arts and culture in their own lives and in the lives of others, encouraging youth to see the arts as a powerful means for expressing their ideas and for understanding the world around them.
School Program
Our school program offers sustained opportunities for students to work with accomplished guest teaching artists in theater, music, dance, and the visual arts. City Lore staff work with artists and host teachers to design programs that integrate with grade level social studies and language arts curricula, culminating in student-produced performances and exhibits. Through our “residencies,” teaching artists combine oral history, community study, and their artistic expertise in the classroom to foster students’ awareness of the many traditions that make up the multicultural landscape of New York City.
Past residencies have used sculpture and painting to explore children’s family history; dance and theater to chronicle the history of various ethnic Americans (Indian, Irish, Chinese, Haitian); and songwriting to convey the lives of community members. We tailor residencies to meet the needs of your school community and work with your staff to design a program that addresses your particular teaching and learning objectives.
Sample Residencies
- American Immigration Study through Dance-Theater
- Local History through Songwriting
- Neighborhood Mural Making
- Brazilian Dance and Capoeira
- Haitian Drumming
- Native American Song & Dance
All City Lore school arts residencies include:
- Creative planning time for teaching artists and classroom teachers
- Experiential, hands-on learning with a practicing artist and an art form
- Cooperative, collaborative activities
- An emphasis on process
- An interdisciplinary approach
- Reflection and assessment
- A culminating activity
- Guest Performances & Field Trips
Consultations
City Lore education staff consult with teachers, administrators, and organizations on how to integrate arts and cultural studies into the core curriculum and on developing community history and oral history projects. Upon request, we develop text, slide and music packets and presentations on specific artistic and cultural traditions.
Professional Development
City Lore offers staff development to New York City school teachers on integrating the arts into the core curriculum, designing neighborhood studies and gathering oral histories, strategies for teaching to multicultural & mixed-level students, and theater-based classroom management skills.
We also provide new and veteran teaching artists support in self-presentation, writing lesson plans and curricula, multi-artist collaborations, and facilitating student research into family and community as inspiration for art making.
Family Workshops
We offer workshops in which parents and children share their stories and learn skills for documenting family and community traditions. We work alongside participants in a series of activities structured to promote intergenerational and cross-cultural understanding, and to build literacy, communication, and analytical skills.
RESOURCES
Resource Center
Located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, our resource center connects educators, students, and the general public with instructional materials in folklore, oral history, and the traditional arts. Our collections include upwards of 1,500 specialty books, 120,000 slides, an extensive audio and visual collection, and interpretive guides to urban film and music. Please call for an appointment.
CARTS Newsletter
C.A.R.T.S. (Cultural Arts Resources for Teachers and Students) is City Lore’s annual education newsletter devoted to exploring the intersections of culture, art, and education. Each issue offers readers classroom activities, point of view essays from practitioners around the country, profiles of artists, model projects, ideas for community exploration fieldtrips, national folk arts in education news, and highlights of books and resources. For a copy of our newsletter articles, call 212.529.1955. Newsletter is free to City Lore Members.
Teaching American History Online
Teaching American History Online is a resource for
teachers, grades K–12. Connect to exciting and useful
materials dealing with historical content and pedagogy
from our professional development program, American
Citizen. In partnership with the New York City
Department of Education Community School District 28,
the Gotham Center for New York City History at CUNY,
and the city’s cultural institutions, the program
promotes and supports quality history instruction.
Click here for free newsletters, lesson
plans, and the latest resources.
Culture Catalog
Our online bookstore offering multimedia resources in folklore, history, and culture that support folk arts and folklife education. City Lore Members receive a 10% discount on Culture Catalog items. Click here to visit our store.
Contacts
To learn more about our local and national educational offerings, please call 212.529.1955
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