• These are kids who don’t get out to museums, so we bring the world to them.
  – Suella McMillan

EKathleen Pierson, an international Art Car designer, designed an Art Car for the Art Attack! 21st Century Community Learning Center program at Blounstown Middle School in Blountstown, Florida. The children helped to piece together the car, which has an anti-smoking theme. Children also had a chance to design their own toy Art Cars, as shown here.

Art Attack!, a program designed by the non-profit Neal Civic Center, provides free, positive, constructive and educational opportunities for at-risk children and their families during non-school hours. The program consists of the following components: eight-week summer day camps; Saturday programs for 21 weeks to parallel the school calendar; weekly tutoring and mentoring for Saturday program participants; and weekly in-school tutoring, mentoring and counseling.

The curriculum includes literature, visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpting), music, dance, drumming, architectural interpretation (as part of regional history), aesthetics and art criticism, art appreciation, public performances, nutrition education and a family literacy program. National and international artists demonstrate for and work with the children. For example, artists in residence have included a mosaicist and a playwright, among others. The playwright wrote a play based on local stories, which was produced with local actors and actresses. The mosaicist’s six-month residency was secured through the National Endowment for the Arts’ Artists & Communities Millennium Project, which engaged a Millennium Artist for each of the 50 states and six special jurisdictions to focus on the power of the arts in addressing fundamental issues of community life.

In 2000, students will undertake the Mars Millennium Project, a national initiative that challenges students to design a human community for the red planet by combining arts, sciences and technology. Additional future activities include an internship program for college students majoring in child development and art education, therapy or administration; a traveling exhibition of the children’s work; and public art performances offered free in each community. Plans include video documentation of this project so it can be used as a prototype for rural art intervention programs nationwide.

This Community Learning Center program places great emphasis on family involvement. For example, it draws families into leadership roles in countywide events via their supervision of community-produced exhibits. Families’ expertise and resources are used to compile a written community history. Also, families are offered a wide menu of volunteer and leadership opportunities, such as hosting performances, creating and caring for exhibits, and identifying local needs and the roles they might play in meeting them. Throughout, parents can make choices according to their schedules, preferences and talents.

The Neal Civic Center established Art Attack! at three local libraries independently of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. It then secured a grant on behalf of the Calhoun County School Board from the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program for a fourth site: the Blountstown Middle School. It received funding for additional programming from the Department of Juvenile Justice, The Florida Arts Council, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Neal Center’s arts and education budget. Altogether, the program currently serves 170 students and their families. The Neal Center provides program management and supervision, service delivery, fiscal management, reporting, and grant management.