Request for Proposal
DEADLINE: Friday, October 29th, 2021 @ 3pm
Young Audiences New Jersey & Eastern Pennsylvania (YA) is seeking an experienced visual teaching artist that identifies as Muslim to participate in our United We Create program. The successful candidate will join a dynamic group of artists providing impactful art education programming centered on the arts and cultures of Muslim countries.
Project Description and Goals
YA received funding from the Building Bridges Program, the national grant-making arm of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, to provide United We Create (UWC) programs to five new schools in the 2021-2022 school year. This first of its kind project, UWC was piloted in five schools in the 2019 and 2020 school years. YA artists and staff successfully developed and implemented UWC programs in a comprehensive model that promoted understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim students, families, and educators and educated non-Muslim communities about Islamic cultures through the arts in a school-based setting.
Educators that participated in the pilot program of United We Create had this to say when asked to share “one thing you learned about Muslim culture that you did not know before the program”:
- Muslim culture varies throughout the world
- there are different ways Muslims practice their faith
- did not know there were so many Muslim cultures
- diversity of Muslims
In response to the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment, the U.S. Department of Education posted an article, “Protecting Our Muslim Youth from Bullying: The Role of the Educator,” encouraging schools to promote anti-bias learning, and implement bullying prevention strategies to reduce discrimination against Muslim students and build bridges across cultural divides. United We Create is designed to use the arts as a school-based intervention to educate, connect, and raise awareness about Islamic culture throughout the world.
UWC Program Components
Funding from the National Endowment of the Arts enables YA to add a visual artist to the UWC artist roster, which now includes storytellers, musicians, and a dancer.
The visual art component will consist of a two-day residency that can be offered as an in-person and a virtual student workshop to accommodate the ever-changing needs of the schools in this current climate.
Student Workshops
Workshops will offer children the chance to engage in hands-on art-making to better understand social, artistic and intra-cultural differences in Muslim communities. Workshops should also build awareness and appreciation of cross-cultural similarities and employ anti-bullying character development themes. Each day of workshops consists of 4 workshops and each workshop should be 45 minutes.
Artist Compensation
The selected visual artist will be paid a stipend of $2,000-$6,000 for program design and development, depending on the number of program components selected. This stipend will cover the teaching artist’s time, any equipment needed to provide virtual programs and all pieces of program design and development, attending meetings with YA regarding this program, and other costs related to program design and development. There is a limited budget available for production costs; if needed, please note an approximate amount in your proposal.
- Artist fee for workshops is $400/day for 4 workshops/day. Workshops are typically 45 minutes.
Program Timeline
The selected visual teaching artist will fully develop proposed program components with support of YA staff/consultants in November 2021 for implementation for the 2021-2022 and the 2022–2023 school year. The program will be offered at no cost to five schools located in our region of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.
Additionally, YA anticipates adding these programs to our catalog which is marketed to schools outside of the UWC project for purchase.
The proposal deadline is October 29th, 2021. Proposals will be reviewed in November and artist selected for program development will be contacted by November 15th, 2021.
For more information about YA and our current artists and programs visit yanjep.org.
Questions? Contact: TAHIRA at [email protected] or Liz Winter-Kuwornu at [email protected].
