One Focus

Rie Poirier-Campbell, Executive Director

Just six short weeks ago, I had the great good fortune of becoming Executive Director of Hartford Performs. Since then, I’ve been on a fast-paced, artful, educational journey to learn about its many facets.

What I’ve found is an impressive collaboration of educators, artists, business people and community leaders. That’s a powerful combination. Hartford Performs is a creative network of diversely talented people from many sectors of our community all gathered together around one central focus: Hartford students.

I can’t tell you how many times each week I hear our fabulous staff – Jaclynn and Larisa – say, “It’s for the students.” 

When we’re scheduling dozens of artists’ appearances in classrooms each week, it’s for the students. When we’re providing professional development to artists to help them use their dance or theater talents to teach math or social studies, it’s for the students. When we’re working with teachers to select the right arts offering to enhance their science curriculum, it’s for the students.

Everything that Hartford Performs does is, indeed, all for the children of Hartford. It’s to make their education richer, deeper, more meaningful, more interesting and more long lasting. The idea behind Hartford Performs is that the arts are not only important in and of themselves; they have the ability to enrich learning of all types. 

Students, for instance, might read about how molecules move at different temperatures, but when they get up and dance like molecules, they get it right down to their toes. They might hear a lesson about the Civil War, but when they have to act out a scene about the conflict, they have some great Ah Ha! moments about motivations and consequences. 

Using the arts to enhance lessons help students to understand so much more deeply. Plus, it makes their classrooms more engaging and truly student-centered. Teaching through the arts calls on students to explore and create. They need to invest themselves in their learning. So while students are drumming, dancing, acting or making a mural, they are developing desirable skills such as creative problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork and presentation skills.

By bringing the arts into the classroom and bringing the students out to see the arts at work in the community, we’re helping to develop young minds that, yes, know a lot of things, AND (even more important) know better how to think.

The techniques we use help Hartford public school students to become interested, interesting people. They foster students’ sense of exploration, their ability to think critically, and come up with truly innovative approaches to challenges. Isn’t that what we want from the people we are going to trust to run our world someday?