The Sun Prairie Creates project is a 2nd year collaboration between Prairie Music & Arts and Sun Prairie Community Schools. Built on a hip-hop framework of empowerment, community, and expression, the project exposes youth in grades 2-5 to poetry, dance, music, and visual art. The project is grounded in the belief that the arts can be transformative and emphasizes self-expression and cooperative learning.
Classes are taking place at CH Bird Elementary, Northside Elementary, and Westside Elementary and are leading toward a final showcase in May at each school for students to celebrate and share what they have created with family and friends.
School themes include the following.
- CH Bird poets and musicians have been exploring how the arts can work together to express an idea, feeling, or theme. The poets have been working hard on poems about a sense of place and the weather and are experimenting with adding music and movement to complement their writing.
- Northside Elementary visual artists are exploring who they are as individuals and within a community through drawing, painting, sculpture, and fiber art. Projects such as self-portraits, a community quilt, and Pop Art name tags have been started, and there’s much more to come in the month ahead.
- Westside Elementary dancers have been exploring the foundations of hip-hop dance. They are learning breakdance moves and basic dance steps and are starting the process of putting together their final showcase.
The 2024 project is supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Cap Times Kids Fund