Patricia Flynn has been a teaching artist for over forty years. She has led numerous Art In Education (AIE) residencies, as well as having served as a panelist, on-site evaluator, and mentor for first-time residency artists. Pat is an arts integration specialist who contributed to the development and publication of the Arts Integration Think & Do Workbook. Over the years Pat has provided arts integration professional learning and coaching for school district leaders, educators, arts specialists and teaching artists. A member of Actors’ Equity and SAG-AFTRA, she has acted and/or stage managed in regional theatre, Off-Broadway, and in London’s West End. As a director, Pat has worked with young artists in Bolivia, Nigeria, Israel, Germany, and the United Kingdom. She is the director of theatre for St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, and is a recipient of a Governor’s Award in the Arts, and a Folk Arts grant in Irish set dancing from the NJ State Council on the Arts. Pat has an MFA in Acting from Catholic University, and studied voice with Benjamin De Loache at the Yale School of Music. She has a Teaching Artist certificate from Columbia University Teachers’ College, and is a teaching artist with Young Audiences New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.

The arts offer a pathway to possibility. Engaging the imagination allows children to envision other worlds, other ways of being. Make believe gives safe transport to their dreams for the future. And theatre, specifically, enables children to give physical life to what they imagine. The teaching artist serves as guide, interpreter, and coach – awakening what is already within the child.