Please Call Ginger for tickets and event details: 845-325-6073 | Drawing for the door prize at 11pm

www.cce-kingston.org

Fun for the whole family, and all proceeds benefit a wonderful organization. The Center  for Creative Education is dedicated to creating a better world by nurturing and empowering youth and community through the arts. Raffle, prizes, refreshments, and above all, DANCE!! Performances by all CCE students, Energy Dance Company, POOK, West Coast Swing, and more!

For more information, call or email Rachel at 845-338-7664 ~ rachel@cce-kingston.org

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KINGSTON — The nonprofit Center for Creative Education has received $18,600 in grants from the state Council on the Arts to bolster its work at the Carnegie Learning Center in partnership with the city school district as well as its own after-school activities, the organization’s executive director said Monday.

Evry Mann said $8,500 of the sum is slated for the center’s work at Carnegie to underwrite local teaching artists to work with high school staff during the school day. Plans in the works include radio productions, video documentaries, and outdoor art installations, he said.

The rest will supplement the center’s after-school activities, with $5,100 going toward scholarships for students needing assistance and $5,000 “to bring in established artists of international reputation to work with the Energy Dance Company and (the Percussion Orchestra of Kingston, or POOK),” he said.

Mann plans to bring in Nora Chipaumire, a New York City-based Zimbabwean choreographer and dancer, Montreal-based dancer and body percussionist Sandy Silva, and Haitian drummer Gaston Jean-Baptiste.

Under “a separate funding stream,” Mann said the Center for Creative Education is working on bringing the Dance Theater of Harlem to Kingston High School in the spring of 2012 for a combination kickoff event for the center moving into Carnegie and master classes and a performance at the school during the day.

Officials initially expected the center to move into Carnegie in early October. Electrical and flooring work is still ongoing in the evenings, however, and the school board and center are still finalizing a lease, part of which is expected to call for the Center for Creative Education to fundraise to avoid taxpayer impact from the $2.93 million construction project.

At this point, there is about $430,000 to go, and the district paid the first bill against the principal on Oct. 15. Mann, who initially hoped to have the fundraising finished by the time students began to use the building, said the fundraising climate is difficult, but “we’ve got a lot of stuff in the works, and we’re going to get it done.”

Walk, Bike and Roll to School

KINGSTON — After a 30-year period of disrepair and vacancy, the newly-renovated Carnegie Learning Center was bustling with activity during a visit by the Freeman on Tuesday afternoon, when approximately 50 students were involved with various aspects of their Media and Communications in Action course.

The students were spread throughout the building in different phases of their class, which is a three-period, interdisciplinary art and English class that is co-taught by three teachers. Students will convey and share their work through broadcast and print journalism techniques.

Some students were split between the top floor’s two multipurpose rooms that have been converted into classrooms — and can also serve as dance studios — others were studying in the multipurpose room downstairs that is being used as an art room, and a fourth group was working in the downstairs computer lab.

Rebecca Dayton, a sophomore, and Corinna Lattrell, a senior, were each taking pictures of activity throughout the building for a video they were putting together themed “a day in the life of Carnegie.”

“EVERYTHING looks so new,” said Dayton of the building, which was constructed in 1904 as a library, but the sophomore noted despite the renovations, the arts and technology center continues to keep a historic look.

Lattrell said she was excited to work on the writing and publishing part of the class. She was learning the photo manipulation software Adobe Photoshop, with which she said many students had not had the opportunity to work before.

DAYTON SAID she liked the structure of the class because students can get their work done at their own pace. The pair said they were also working on writing odes and reading biographies, after which they would be assigned to create biographies of their own on the people about whom they were reading.

Lattrell had chosen a biography about William Shakespeare, and Dayton was reading about Eddie Murphy.

Vice Principal Andrew Sheber noted the curriculum is consistent with the rest of the high school’s. He said, anecdotally, he has heard the same excitement from other students about Carnegie and its programs, and he was looking forward to seeing how students perform on assessments.

Teacher Rachael Scorca, who is taking the lead with the English part of the program, said the extra time with students has allowed the teachers to become a lot more familiar with their pupils and their work habits, and the program’s co-teaching model allows each member of the group to maximize his or her strengths in the classroom.

Because the class serves sophomores through seniors, Scorca said she has seen mentor relationships develop between the students.

She said she found the program to be exciting and innovative, and all of the educators involved are deeply invested in the program they helped create from scratch.

KINGSTON — An open house will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at the newly renovated Carnegie Learning Center on the Kingston High School campus on Broadway.

The overhaul of the city’s long-vacant former library was approved by Kingston school district voters in February 2009, and construction took about a year from when it began in the summer of 2010.

The building now serves as an arts and technology center for the high school and is used for some after-school activities.

Today’s open house will start with music by high school students and remarks by school district Superintendent Gerard Gretzinger, Board of Education President James Shaughnessy and Evry Mann, executive director of the Center for Creative Education, a non-profit group that is running after-school activities in the Carnegie building.

People can  “mull around” the building starting at 10:30 a.m., Gretzinger said, and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., high school Vice Principal Andrew Sheber, KSQ Architects consultants, students and teachers will provide tours of the center, which includes classrooms and computer labs.

From 11 a.m. to noon, high school music students will perform on the small stage in the building’s basement, and from noon to 1 p.m., Center for Creative Education members will perform there.

The Carnegie building was constructed in 1904 as a public library — one of 2,509 funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. The Kingston school district has owned the building since 1978, when the Kingston Library moved to the former Sojourner Truth Elementary School building at 55 Franklin St., where it continues to operate today.