Empire State Creates

In partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable launched the Empire State Creates project in 2021.

This pilot program seeks to support teaching artists and offer continued learning opportunities for New Yorkers of all ages through the development of asynchronous arts learning materials.

Grants were awarded to 15 independent New York State-based teaching artists to create 4-5 asynchronous arts learning resources for distribution in community settings. Student audiences for these resources include students (K-12th grade), older adults (creative aging), multilingual learners, and more.

All lessons created by these teaching artists and their accompanying materials are available here at the Roundtable’s online resource library.

The Lessons

  • |

    The Emboldened Voice Project with Dr. Tiffany Du Mouchelle

    Embolden your creative spirit, embody your breath and extend the expressive possibilities of your voice! Dr. Tiffany Du Mouchelle leads a journey of vocal expansion and personal empowerment through improvisation, breath work, movement, sound meditation, and extended voice techniques.

  • ||

    Second-Hand News: Using the Headlines to Make Art with Susan Rowe Harris

    In this series for teachers, we’ll look at how three artists use the newspaper in very different ways as inspiration for an artwork that links to Language Arts, Journalism, POV, Government, and Media.

  • |

    Invisible Cities: New York with Stephanie Costello

    In the book “Invisible Cities,” author Italo Calvino creates dozens of imagined cities based on Venice. This multi-media visual arts course uses New York City as its muse—offering the city as subject for students to develop imaginative strategies for visual creation, while exploring ideas of place.

  • |

    Mythical Creatures and The Alebrijes with Polina Porras Sivolobova

    An interdisciplinary exploration inspired by Alebrijes – the brightly colored Mexican folk art sculptures of fantastical creatures. Each lesson approaches the topic from a different perspective with activities from art and culture appreciation, drawing and coloring, puppetry, collage, and animation.

  • |

    Out from the Wings with Michael Montoya

    This is a series of lessons designed to help students identify and understand how traditional gender and sexual identity stereotypes dominate professional dance training and performance as well as how this rigid structure affects LGBTQIA+ dancers.

  • |

    The Classroom Album: Fostering Collaborative Behavior through Group Composition with Laura Brenneman

    The goal of this project is to provide public middle school students with the tools to analyze music and lyrics through the lens of social justice, use critical listening techniques, and contribute individual points of view to a collaborative songwriting project.

  • |

    Writing Your Own Songs Inspired By Protest Music and NYC Artists with Katalina Gutierrez

    This project combines music and poetry to create a protest song. Throughout these three mini lessons, students will learn about the power of their personal stories, write a poem or a song, and share their projects with the world. The final artwork will be in the form of a poem or a song.

  • |

    Mandala Dot Painting with Jeanette Rodriguez

    These step-by-step Mandala Dot painting lessons were created to have meaning to those with dementia and the elderly. Research implies that artistic engagement may help to ease symptoms of dementia like stress. It may also increase mood and self-esteem and possibly help stimulate memory.

  • ||||||||||||

    From the Page to the Stage: Performing Poetry with Elia Monte Brown

    In this series of lessons, students will be invited to explore the world of poetry for performance. Each lesson can be done independently or as a series.

  • |

    Food as Art with Ashley Frenkel

    Food as Art centers around how food can be used as inspiration for and a medium in visual art-making. By reflecting on their own kitchens, memories, perceptions, feelings and families, young artists will explore their relationship to food and the stories that come from cooking and eating.

  • ||

    Sub-Cultural Comics with Anu Annam

    Students will create traditional or digital sequential art with a writing-design-illustrating method, emphasizing concept and creativity to tell a moving visual story, rooted in culture, identity, and physio-emotional challenges, and their intersection, in order to connect with the self and readers.

  • Foundational 2D Graphic Design projects with Alisha Brunelli

    Students will create a series of formal and conceptual projects that work with design theory and principles. Students will brainstorm, make connections to the world, and solve visual problems for a wide audience; all the while accumulating understanding of design thinking (the design process).