School Arts Partnerships
BAX is a longtime Arts Services vendor with the New York City Department of Education and provides a range of in-school and out-of-school services for Pre-K through 12th grade. Working with professional artists & educators and drawing from our established studio curriculum in dance/movement, drama, and tumbling, BAX works in close collaboration with our partners to provide customized programming that meets the needs of your school community. BAX school partnerships build performing arts techniques while putting special emphasis on creative choice-making, social justice, and the celebration of individual identity within the context of a whole community. BAX residencies typically culminate in a performance opportunity, with a range from informal classroom shares to fully realized productions, to encourage young artists to engage performance and audience reflection as a critical part of an ongoing performing arts practice. Read more about BAX’s mission working at the intersection of performance, education, and social justice and about our arts education philosophy & core teaching and learning values.
“BAX is knowledgeable of, and really lives and breathes equity work. It’s interwoven well, and exploring it via the arts is fabulous… Thanks for all that you do. This is a life giving and enriching partnership, for me, for our teachers, for our families, and most importantly, for our kids.”
What makes BAX School Arts Partnerships unique?
Drawing on explicitly anti-racist and inclusive teaching practices, BAX performing arts residencies provide embodied experiences that help to build individual confidence and voice through empathy, collaboration, creativity and play. BAX’s accessible, flexible, and affordable programming meets children & school communities where they are to ensure that all kinds of learners are engaged. As an intergenerational organization, BAX programming is also available to whole school communities including professional development opportunities for school educators and family engagement workshops.
“Our collaboration with the BAX team has had a profound impact on the entire PS 8 community. Exploring identity & inclusion and working to be anti-bias alongside Kelindah and our fifth-grade students opened our eyes, ears, and hearts in powerful ways. We are grateful to the BAX team for their commitment to the extensive work that takes place before a residency begins–exploring our community with us, meeting us where we are and supporting our collective growth.”
See below examples of BAX’s residency programs. Submit an inquiry about an arts partnership residency at your school.
In School Residencies
Residency Spotlight: Brooklyn New School
Working through PreK to 5th grade, BAX teaching artists bring movement/dance, music, and drama programming to the entire school community through 12 week session residencies with each grade over the course of the school year. BAX Teaching Artists make creative, age appropriate, connections with school curriculum and engage students in fun embodied activities. The program includes a well-established 4th Grade Musical Production that brings together elements of the residency and serves as an opportunity to engage the wider school and family community in a performance celebration.
“Nearly every teacher in our school would be pleased if a BAX teaching artist were part of their educational team every day of the school year and truly appreciate the depth of the relationship and its value to their teaching practice.”
After School Enrichment Programming
Bring BAX to your after onsite school program! With engaging teaching artists, customizable curriculum, and affordable pricing, BAX is an ideal partner for enrichment as part of your school’s onsite after school programs.
“I so appreciate [BAX] being here with us and keeping our kids engaged and excited.”
Trauma-Informed Movement Residencies
Introduces dance/creative movement and choreography as an artistic practice that builds physical, mental, and emotional skills, with a focus on body as instrument. Through collaborative movement games, line dances, and choreographic workshops, participants build important skills such as perception, spatial awareness, listening, communication, cooperation, creative choice-making, sequencing, stamina, rhythm, and performance. Students build up confidence to share original, collaborative, choreography and celebrate the joy of moving together!
Interrupting Bigotry (Intergenerational)
Founded in collaboration with BAX Education Department and longtime BAX Teaching Artist José Joaquin Garcia, BAX’s Interrupting Bigotry program draws upon Augusto Boal’s powerful and interactive Theatre of the Oppressed (Forum Theater) model of performance to engage students in discussions around bias and bigotry, build ensemble, and develop ways of becoming upstanders. Last year BAX worked in collaboration with Ella Baker School (EBS) 6th grade students as well as 5th grade students at the Brooklyn New School (BNS) to develop original “Interrupting Bigotry” scripts, which the two ensembles shared with each other in a spring performance exchange. Building on these cross school collaborations, this fall new Ella Baker and BNS ensembles, again under Garcia’s direction, will come together for a drama workshop exchange. It is our goal to bring the groups together again when their “2023 Interrupting Bigotry” scripts are developed for a performance exchange.
“BAX Teaching Artist José Joaquín Garcia creates and nourishes a community of young actor-activists through the Interrupting Bigotry work with our children. By exploring instances of bias and oppression our children may have seen or experienced through the work of Augosto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, José allows not just the actors but also the audience (students, staff, families) to experience the bridge between awareness and action, trying out language to interrupt a moment of harm to turn things around and take care of each other. This work is incredibly powerful for all who get to partake each year.”
Gender Expression Workshops (Intergenerational)
Drawing upon dramatic play, BAX’s Gender Expression Programming explores topics of gender identity, expression, bias and bullying towards fostering more fully liberated youth and inclusive school communities. The program invites LGBTQIA-identifying and LGBTQIA allies to resource each other and establish a greater peer support network. Programming is customizable and available in-school and out of school for elementary aged students as well as for school educators, administrators, and parent/caregivers. Participants will leave the workshop with tips and tools to cultivate more gender-affirming connections within their homes, school communities and beyond.”
“This [Gender Expression] Program is authentically working with the kids where they are, includes everyone actively and makes bridges every week for them to expand out personally and connect to others from wherever they began. Other programs we’ve done ask children to fit into the program, but this program somehow manages to both give and take in a magical way, to fit everyone at the same time. Part of this success, I think, is possible because Kelindah [BAX Teaching Artist] seems to be a professional artist as well as educator in equal measures.”
School Pickup
BAX offers school pick up service to select local schools. Learn more by clicking the button below.