Center for Creative Education | Kingston, NY

By KYLE WIND Daily Freeman staff - Published: Tuesday, November 29, 2011

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.”