Educational Outreach
Our Mission
Our mission is to give every student the opportunity to enrich their lives through music and the arts, regardless of age, background, or economic status. Funding for the arts continues to be cut in schools across the country, even as studies continue to prove that children exposed to the arts grow up to be forward-thinking, successful adults. Children who participate in theater and music education are more compassionate and empathetic, have enhanced memory and memorization skills, demonstrate enhanced spatial and mathematical reasoning, and are overall more creative problem solvers than their peers. Their speaking and presentation skills equip them for the interactive work environments they will one day encounter. Additionally, student involvement in local programs encourages them to become positively engaged in their community while minimizing the risk of delinquency.
One of the ways we achieve this goal is to admit all students to every one of our programs free of charge, and work with local schools to transport students to and from our programs that run during school hours. When possible, we facilitate special recitals and masterclasses, where our performing artists can talk one-on-one with students in the community and give them a sneak peak at the life of a full-time performing artist.
Over the years we have partnered with the Atlanta Opera Studio Tour to offer two daytime performances open to students and teachers only, in addition to the evening performance that is open for general admission. In January of 2020, those two daytime performances enjoyed a completely full house, and ALL local elementary and middle schools were represented.
See below for other examples of our educational outreach initiatives. For more information, please send us an email at info@dublin-laurensartscouncil.com and one of us will be happy to contact you.
DLAC Theatre
Over the past few years, DLAC has invested in summer theatre programs that give our local students the chance to audition, rehearse, and perform onstage at Theatre Dublin. However, traveling theatre programs usually only last a week, and the shows themselves are geared toward younger students, leaving the more seasoned students wanting a greater challenge. In Fall of 2018, we decided to take this idea, expand the program to a month-long rehearsal schedule to allow for more complex shows, and bring the program in-house instead of depending on a traveling theatre group. This opened the door to a broader age group of students and presented them with a much more endearing challenge over the summer, resulting in a more enriching experience and a finished product that everyone (students, teachers, parents) could be extremely proud of.
Play It Forward
A core value of the Arts Council is to support all musical and arts education initiatives throughout our community, and contribute to the lives of the students and educators wherever possible. Recently we discovered a need for quality band instruments at our local schools, where school-provided instruments had fallen into a state of disrepair, and there simply were not enough usable instruments to put in the hands of every willing student. Therefore, DLAC started the “Play It Forward” initiative, where donors can choose to donate a used instrument, or make a monetary donation to fund the refurbishment of used instruments back to full functionality. All donations are tax deductible as well as greatly appreciated.