Organizational Picture

Communities in Schools of Greenwood Leflore, Inc., a community-based, non-profit organization, has been in operation since 1992.  

CIS has been “chartered” by the national organization, Communities in Schools, which means that after it has been rigorously tested and audited, it is considered an exemplary program by the national organization.  With an annual budget of approximately $450,000, CIS serves five rural Delta counties and the Oakley training school in Hinds County.  For the year ending 6/30/04, CIS provided services for 2,747 students.

It is the only operational, chartered CIS in Mississippi.  CIS has a 12-member board that serves three-year terms and is representative of the community.  Board committees include executive, financial, publicity, programming and fundraising. 

Overview

Since 1995, Communities in Schools Greenwood Leflore (CIS) has been providing artist residency and arts education programs for schools, after-school programs and Adolescent Offender Programs (AOP) in Mississippi.  Currently, CIS provides arts education programs to youth in 6 counties—Hinds, Bolivar, Leflore, Grenada, Tallahatchie, and Washington—through partnerships with five alternative schools, two Adolescent Offender Programs (AOP), three elementary schools, three high schools, and the Oakley Training School.  Services include fall and spring semester artist residencies in the five alternative schools (creative writing and visual arts), year-round artist residencies in the two AOPs  and the Oakley Training School (ceramics, painting, print-making, music), and year-round after-school/summer arts classes (ceramics, video production, creative writing). 

The work of CIS has been recognized and supported by regional and national governemental entities:

• 11/01 received 3-year grant totaling $46,500 from Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) for the "Core Arts Initiative." 
• 10/02 received 3-year grant totaling $300,000 from the U.S. Department of Education for "Cultural Partnerships for At-Risk Youth."   
• 3/03 received $10,550 from Mississippi Humanities Council (MHC) to fund development of a Cultural Plan for Greenwood.
• 12/04 received $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Challenge Grant to fund development of a Cultural Plan for Greenwood. 
• 5/03 received $275,000 from MAC Building Fund for the Arts to create the Greenwood Community Arts Center
• 3/04 received $10,250 grant from Forest Service and NEA to fund development, writing and publication of a Cultural Plan for Charleston, MS.
• 4/05 received $20,000 Learning through the Arts (Literature) grant from the NEA to support alternative school creative writing programs.   

Our Programs

MAC Core Arts--Communities in Schools operates a very successful Core Arts project for adjudicated and high-risk youth.  The Core Arts Initiative is a statewide program of the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC).  CIS operates the majority of MAC’s Core Arts sites.  The components of our program are prevention (adequate after-school arts programs to engage youth), intervention (arts programs in adolescent offender programs, detention centers and training schools) and after-care (arts programs in alternative schools where youth are remanded after incarceration or during probation). 

After four years, this project has very supportive partnerships in place.  CIS partners include Region 1 and Region VI Mental Health who provide staff to assist artists, space, transportation and students, 5 school districts (Greenville, Grenada, Cleveland, West Tallahatchie and Leland) and the Oakley Training School who provide in-school teachers to assist artists, space and students, and Delta State University who provides space, students for in-service learning, supplies, and management personnel.  All partners are involved in the design and implementation of the project.  This project has great community support as evidenced by funding, participation in culminating events, and willingness of partners to leverage community resources.

GOALS AND RESULTS OF CORE ARTS PROGRAM

The goals of our Core Arts project are to have a measurable and lasting positive impact on participating youth, sponsoring organizations, local community development, to demonstrably benefit participating artists, and to increase awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the arts as an effective resource for adjudicated youth among the state’s arts and youth service practitioners.  CIS measures these tangible benefits through continued cooperation with Bill Cleveland, the Core Arts evaluator and through internal evaluation with students, staff, artists and the community.  
For example, Oakley Training School students in our creative writing program raised their reading level up to four grade levels. 

• 83% of the students in CIS’ program at Oakley Training School improved their grade reading level. 
• 50% improved their reading two to four grade levels.
• Cleveland Achievement Center students in our creative writing program improved their English grades.
• 75% of the students in CIS’s Cleveland program improved their English grades. 
• In the control group under similar circumstances but without CIS’ programs, only 57% of the students improved their English grades.

Classes include pottery/sculpture, drawing, painting, collage, music, and creative writing.  The classes are lead by seasoned, qualified, currently producing artists. Our current roster has 17 artists of whom 6 have master of fine arts degrees; all have extensive teaching experience. Joint trainings for staff and artists demonstrate new techniques, create better understanding of the program, increase communication among management, artists and staff, enhance participant commitment, and improve the sustainability of the program.  Please refer to the Artist Roster Schedule for frequency, duration, location and arts disciplines taught in the various programs.

The primary beneficiaries of this program are court-involved youth ages 12 to 17.  However, AOP staff, alternative school staff and artists also benefit by learning from the students and attending staff development training.  The general public is invited to the student art exhibits and performances held at least twice per year.  Last year, CIS held 11 art exhibits throughout the Delta.  Over $2,000 worth of student artwork was sold.  All proceeds go directly to the student artist.

DOE Cultural Partnerships-- In October of 2002, CIS received a three-year Cultural Partnership grant from U.S. Department of Education (DOE), Office of Innovation and Enhancement, to develop arts and humanities programs for academically at-risk middle and high school youth in Leflore County, Mississippi.  The CIS Cultural Partnerships Project provides exemplary after-school curricula in the following areas: Visual Arts (ceramics and print-making), Performing Arts (creative writing/poetry performance, drama, and video production), and Heritage Studies (local Blues history, Native American history, and Civil Rights history). Prior to program inception, artists and consultants were identified and high standard entrepreneurial curricula were developed. 

Programs have run continuously for at least 16 weeks each semester since inception along with four weeks of half-day summer camp instruction in 2003 and 2004. Now in its third and final year, the two groups of Leflore County youth are culminating their experience in the program by researching and producing independent documentaries on Black Heritage subjects of their choice. Faculty and interns from the Radio/Television/Film Department of Mississippi Valley State University (MVSU) are providing youth in the program with the technical training necessary to produce professional quality media.

In Cleveland, CIS partners with the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University which has created a Mississippi Delta culture curriculum for implementation with after-school youth.  This program surveys the same subjects as the Greenwood program and in the same interactive, field investigation fashion.  This project, called The Delta Heritage Lighthouse Partnership, has been operational for two years.

Youth Arts Programs--With its center of operation in Greenwood,  CIS now owns and is renovating a 19,000 sq. ft, building to be used as a training and art center for area residents.  At present, it hosts a community ceramics cooperative and provides summer media and ceramics camps for area youth.  When completed, the Greenwood Community Arts Center will also host painting, culinary arts, photography, and theater programs, two galleries and a black box theater.

CIS has facilitated the development of Cultural Plans for Greenwood, Marks and Charleston ensuring that residents have access to their cultural/artistic heritage.  Each Cultural Plan generated community support for youth arts programs and includes proposals for the development of community arts centers, youth heritage tours, and increased arts education opportunities for youth both in school and after school.  Linda Whittington and Communities in Schools of Greenwood Leflore were given the 2004 Special Recognition Award by the Mississippi Humanities Council for leadership in developing cultural plans for towns in the Delta
 

Linda Whittington - Executive Director - has worked in non-profit arts administration since 1986.  Since assuming that position in 2001, Whittington has re-focused CIS from after-school tutorial programs into developing arts/humanities strategies to impact and engage area youth.   She has expanded the program from just serving youth in Leflore County to serving youth in 5 additional surrounding Delta counties. 

Since 1999, Whittington has been involved in the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Whole Schools Arts Initiative as a Field Advisor.  That initiative involves schools statewide that are implementing curriculum based on the arts.  In addition to this initiative, she works on a team of 3 artists to create interactive, interdisciplinary units for MAC, which are distributed statewide.  From 1995 – 2000, Whittington was Executive Director of the South Arkansas Arts Center, El Dorado, AR.  While there, she expanded arts-in-education programs from 1 school district to 5 school districts and changed the emphasis of the center from local to regional. 

Whittington served as Education Director of Imagination Celebration Fort Worth, Inc. from 1991 to 1995.  That program affiliated with the Kennedy Center, was a co-curricular arts and education program responsible for scheduling, coordinating and funding over 53 artists and/or arts groups into schools in Fort Worth and surrounding communities.  This program reached approximately 90,000 students annually.  Whittington is the 2004 recipient of the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Special Recognition Award for leadership in developing cultural plans for towns in the Delta.

Grady Hillman, Consultant -  is a well-published poet, folklorist, anthropologist, and internationally recognized arts and education consultant.  From 2000 to 2002, he was the Technical Assistance Provider for the federal initiative Arts Programs for Young Offenders in Detention and Corrections, a collaborative Discretionary Program of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).  In 2001, Hillman began work with the National Guild of Community Schools for the Arts as a consultant for HUD and the Arts Endowment in the federal initiative Creative Communities to develop 20 community schools for the arts in housing developments around the nation. 

In recent years, Americans for the Arts has published two monographs by Hillman on the topic of community arts, Artists in The Community: Training Artists to Work in Alternative Settings and The Arts and Humanities as Agents for Social Change: Summary Report of the 4th International Congress of Educating Cities.  In 2002, the Arts Endowment and OJJDP published his most recent monograph Arts Programs for Young Offenders in Detention and Corrections: A Guide to Promising Practices.

Other current contracts include consultant services to the Mississippi Arts Commission, management of a Department of Education Cultural Partnerships grant for Communities in Schools in the Mississippi Delta.  In August 2004, Hillman completed the development of an arts and heritage economic plan for the city of Greenwood, Mississippi. 

Currently, he is working on similar plans in Charleston and Marks, Mississippi.  Hillman has worked extensively as a resident artist, program administrator, and arts consultant for local, state, federal, and foreign agencies in the development of arts programs.  Since 1979, he has worked with hundreds of schools, arts organizations, housing authorities, adult and juvenile justice institutions, faith-based organizations, and municipal governments to develop cultural programming for community settings, working directly with programs in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Peru and throughout the U. S.


Robin Whitfield - graduated from Delta State University in 1996 with a BFA in painting.  She has been working with the Core Arts project since 2002.  From 2000 to 2003, she taught summer classes at the Bologna Performing Arts Center, DSU.  From 1996 to 2002 she conducted many artist residencies in the north Delta schools, primarily in the Grenada School district.  She is a producing artist with a studio in Grenada.  Exhibitions have included: Southside Gallery, Oxford, The Warehouse, Cleveland, Cottonlandia Fine Arts Competition (Viola Sanders Award), Greenwood, First Street Gallery, Grenada, among others.

Jay Kirgis - has a MFA in Art with an emphasis on sculpture from University of Mississippi (1999).  Jay is also an accomplished musician, playing in many venues in Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri.  He has worked for the Core Arts project since 2002.  Exhibitions include Southside Gallery, Oxford, Greenville Arts Council, Guachoya Cultural Center, Lake Village, AR.  His awards include 2 portraits purchased by Highway 61 Blues Museum, Leland, 3 pieces chosen for the Memphis Blues Foundation’s “Lifetime Achievement Awards”, “Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture” awarded by the International Sculpture Center, Providence RI.

Rachel Ballentine - graduated from the University of Mississippi with a Master of Art Education in 2000.  As Ms. Ballentine states, “Art is the beauty of a thing represented in creative works; art education is a tool that makes both children and adults THINK.”  She works in the tradition of African potters, digging for the perfect clay, building by hand, polishing by stone.  She has worked for the Core Arts project since 2002.  She is also a field advisor with MAC’s Whole Schools Initiative.  Exhibitions include:  Mississippi Valley State University, Itta Bena, Southside Gallery, Oxford, Greenville Arts Council, First Street Gallery, Grenada.

Dorothy Shawhan - is chair of the Division of Languages and Literature, Delta State University.  She graduated from George Mason University, Fairfax VA with a MFA degree in 1991.  She is an accomplished, published author.  Her most recently completed novel is Lizzie and currently she is working on Judge Lucy, a biography in progress.  She has many honors and awards including Mississippi Library Association, Fiction Writer of the Year (1996) and Alumni Achievement Award, Mississippi University for Woman (1998).  She has worked with the Core Arts Project since 2003.

COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF GREENWOOD LEFLORE, INC.
212 W. Washington Street, Greenwood, MS  38930
Phone (662) 455-2864  Fax (662) 453-7217

info@communities-in-schools.org