Resources

We offer a variety of resources for schools, community programs and professionals, including:

Cultural Access Resources

A Map to Success: Creativity Works!

Docent Handbook

Web Resources
Web Resources in disabilities, arts, and education include a large and growing collection of high quality sites individually selected by the VSA arts staff to be of particular use to people visiting this Web site. Site visitors are encouraged to suggest sites for inclusion in this database; however, addition of site is not automatic. Each and every site is evaluated before being added live to this collection. Only artists with disabilities are included in our list of individual artists' sites.

A collection of Mailing List discussions in disabilities, the arts and education provide free subscriptions to private individuals for participation in highly targeted topical discussions.

Technical Assistance

Our professional staff offers technical assistance, information and referral to programs and professionals all over the state.

Training and Materials for Teachers and Other Professionals
We work with many professionals in the disability field, people such as art therapists, rehabilitation specialists, and special education teachers. Although VSA arts offers no formal certification for teachers, we do offer a two teacher's resource guides:

• Express Diversity!, a curriculum which uses arts activities to teach disability awareness, and
• Start with the Arts, a curriculum aimed at preschoolers that uses arts-based learning to promote school readiness and literacy.

Also, aspiring professionals who work with our program participants in workshops, at festivals, and in their communities find these hands-on opportunities invaluable.

Grants, Scholarships and Awards
Two national programs, the VSA arts Young Soloists Program and the VSA arts Playwright Discovery Program, offer monetary awards to recipients.

Young Soloists Program
Students are invited to submit entries for this national program, which each year recognizes outstanding young musicians with disabilities, ages 25 and under, who have exhibited exceptional talents as vocalists or instrumentalists. A committee of music professionals selects four award recipients to receive scholarship funds and perform at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Panasonic Young Soloists Award, given annually to musicians who reside in the United States, is sponsored by the Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company. The Rosemary Kennedy International Young Soloists Award, for musicians from outside the United States, is sponsored by The Kennedy Center Education Department through the Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund.

Playwright Discovery Program
Students are invited to submit entries for this national program, which asks individuals with disabilities to submit an original one-act script documenting the experience of living with a disability. One script in each of two age categories -- 21 and under and 22 and above -- is selected for professional production at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.