Artworks Anywhere & Everywhere Thanks to the Van Wezel Foundation

By Sylvia Whitman

Say Van Wezel, and most Gulf Coast residents think of a structure, the purple clamshell on Sarasota Bay. But since March 13, when Sarasota declared a citywide public health emergency and the performing arts center closed its doors to all but a skeletal maintenance crew, it’s the Van Wezel infrastructure that has moved to the fore. The city-owned Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall and the nonprofit Van Wezel Foundation have teamed up to meet the current needs of our community by launching Artworks Anywhere, a free online service for families, educators, and caregivers to extend learning at home.

“As soon as the hall announced it had to close, the foundation felt strongly we needed to help the arts education department continue its work and deliver new content to students at home,” says Van Wezel Foundation CEO Cheryl Mendelson. 

Drawing on the foundation’s strength in developing infrastructure, the Van Wezel teams came up with Artworks Anywhere, creating “consistent video modules for teachers and parents to tap into and learn from home” and promoting and distributing them. “Everyone with an internet connection has access through YouTube,” says Mendelson, “which is an acceptable platform for school districts to do remote learning.” 

The campaign goal is for users to See Art, Create Art, Share Art using the #vanwezel and #ArtworksAnywhere hashtags—especially art they’ve created through the online lessons. One of the first modules, narrated by teaching artist Katelyn McKelley, guides students through designing a costume from household items. These online lessons help children use their imaginations and work as a team, all while promoting literacy and infusing children with creative ways to learn through the arts.

Since 1987, the foundation has supported arts education and capital projects through $14 million in grants. In pre-pandemic times, the hall’s programs enriched the lives of 30,000 local students per year at 176 schools across Sarasota, Manatee, Desoto, Charlotte, and Hillsborough counties. “It’s not just field trips,” says Mendelson, “but arts integration that inspires children to learn and seek new worlds.” 

In partnership with the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Van Wezel has trained teachers to use art in the classroom. Working with school districts, it has sponsored 15 family and literacy nights, mostly at Title 1 schools with large concentrations of low-income students this last year. Supported by the foundation, the hall’s teaching artists and education staff design curriculum-based activities for teachers, from language arts to science. Recent study guides for Charlotte’s Web, for instance, previewed vocabulary and suggested discussions about spider webs and egg sacs. 

But with this spring’s live performances of the E.B. White classic and other in-school and in-theater activities canceled, the Van Wezel’s education and community engagement department has pivoted. 

Together, the Van Wezel Hall and Foundation are also spearheading the Suncoast Arts REACH Task Force, a group of local arts organizations, school districts, and early learning coalitions. As schools extended spring breaks and then sent students online from home, the task force identified the community’s greatest needs and set out to curate and deliver quality content. “We looked at what we felt was most important and who has the infrastructure to reach the community,” says Mendelson. The group, which ranges from The Ringling to the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Sarasota County to Embracing Our Differences, to name a few, and has posted an online calendar (bit.ly/artsREACHactivitycalendars) with suggested daily activities and vetted online resources. 

The task force “gathers” weekly on a zoom call. As needs shift, remote learning offerings will evolve. “We think it’s really important that we remain nimble,” says Mendelson.

Inspiring People to Hang On

Isolated at home and forced to pause, Americans are thinking, evaluating, and prioritizing, Mendelson says. They see musicians stepping onto porches and playing their violins, singers performing in cyberspace. People flick their lights in solidarity. Around the world, artists—many of them Van Wezel performers at one time or another—continue “to inspire people to have hope to hang on.” 

The foundation thanks donors for their continued support. “The hardest thing,” says Mendelson, “has been distancing. We are a high-touch industry. We see kids at a family performance; we see our donors in the hall.” Working remotely, the foundation staff has increased its communication—newsletters, phone calls, online updates. “People are thirsty for information,” she says. “We want to make sure that people are safe but continue to feel inspired.”

Recruited from Chicago, where she led the Harris Theater in Millennium Park, Mendelson says her post-Covid-19 focus remains helping the foundation write the next chapter—growing the hall while building a new world-class performing arts center as part of The Bay park master plan. Although the pandemic has created a climate of uncertainty, “it’s been inspiring to see forward thinking and new partnerships and collaboration locally and globally,” she says. “It’s remarkable to see our better selves rise. When we come together with our best, that’s when things get done better, faster than anyone envisioned before. My greatest hope is on other side.”

In the meantime, she imagines that kids in school online are learning about kindness and generosity of spirit. “We are excited to help play a role in keeping our teaching artists employed as well as making an investment in the teachers and educators whose expertise is critical in this time of crisis,” says Mendelson. “As we look to our future, one thing is certain: The arts are as relevant as ever in shaping the fabric of our lives.”

FOR MORE INFORMATIONabout Van Wezel Foundation, visit vwfoundation.org.