Coalition Receives Sixth
Consecutive Arts Grant

Essex County and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts awarded the South Orange/Maplewood Community Coalition on Race a $4000 Essex County Local Arts Program (ECLAP) Grant for 2011.  The selection for funding was based on merits of the arts-related initiatives for the current year, and prior achievement as an arts provider.  Grant Administrator, Kate Hartwyk, noted in the award notification letter "appreciation to your organization for dedication to the arts in Essex County and the State of New Jersey."  This grant is the sixth consecutive award received from ELAP with the first being a grant to support Two Towns in Harmony  in 2005.

Creative Writing:
Succeeding in High School

    One project the Schools Committee of the Coalition has been working on for several years is a series of brochures of Top Ten Tips for getting the most out of our schools for your children. After completing brochures for elementary and middle school kids, this academic year, 2010-2011, we've been working with students at the Montrose Campus of Columbia High School for a high school brochure.  The brochures are for everyone, but they are aimed especially at students and families who may need help in negotiating our school system.   

    The project began with a creative writing assignment that asked the students to imagine writing a letter of advice to a young friend or relative about to enter Columbia High School. From these imagined communications, the students came up with their Top Ten Tips. The work on this brochure, led by student Akira Davis (photo, top left), is now in production with illustrations, lay-out, and more with support from English teacher Elisa Pianko and guidance counsellor Marcia Hicks. 

     This project is both a means of combining the creative arts with the Coalition's mission and of increasing integration in our schools by working to close the racial academic achievement gap.

To read the  letters,  click here.

  An Interview With Ellen Greenfield,

Coalition Volunteer and

1978 Arts Center Board Member

EG: My Bachelor of Fine Arts and MA are in art and art history. My skills, or lack of  them, in creating art never satisfied me. I enjoy my current role, as Docent (tour guide) at the Newark Museum, Studio Tour organizer and Board member of Gallery 1978 on Springfield Avenue in Maplewood, tremendously.

EG: Gallery1978 is dedicated to bringing people interested in the arts together. Our Board membership/leadership, the programs and exhibitions represent the rich diversity of the SO/M community.

We encourage emerging artists and students from our schools with exhibits. Our current exhibit, UNTIRING, Tires, Textures

 and Triumphs, the art of Chakaia Booker, is the latest of our winter exhibitions featuring outstanding African-American artists. She is one of the nation's most lauded living artists. This is how our Board chose to celebrate the 10th anniversary of 1978 Maplewood Arts Center. (The exhibit runs until March 13. Gallery hours Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 PM) We are concious of the value of integration and the celebration of  it's richness.

EG: Our intent is to make Gallery 1978 a place where artists will come together to share ideas and support each other -- no matter their differences.

EG:  I have started pulling together all those special objects--old photos of people you don't quite reccognize, an earring left over from a set, sea shells that I just had to bring back, etc.--to create environments in wooden boxes. My old training in the arts comes into play and I have exhibited a couple of times. There is nothing as rewarding as starting something new and creative in your 60s.

To Learn More about the 1978 Gallery, click here. 

Through the Lens of Integration

Through the Lens of Integration will be a visual arts experience held in May 2011 featuring professional, local photographers who will conduct three workshops for residents who have an interest in photography. Participants must bring their own cameras and are welcome regardless of skill level. The challenge will be for each participant to capture in photographs their personal point of view and experience of integration here in South Orange/Maplewood. The first workshop will explore the theme of integration plus photography basics.  The second workshop will be a problem solving consultation to assist participants and the third workshop will focus on display and installation of the final products.  The community will be invited to a closing reception to view the photos and to hear the stories and inspirations 

This project is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the Essex County Division of Cultural Affairs.

A Short History of Integration
Through the Arts
In South Orange/Maplewood

The Community Coalition on Race has for sixteen years been working to make the towns of South Orange and Maplewood thriving, stable, racially integrated communities. While we've been working toward greater integration in our schools and neighborhoods, we also continue to face the challenge of pulling down the barriers of cultural and social segregation between residents of different races.  By hosting participatory arts experiences, our Integration Through the Arts program uses the arts to bring together people of different races and cultural backgrounds to build authentic relationships across racial boundaries.

From 1999 through 2006, we partnered with the local libraries and Seton Hall University on Two Towns One Book reading events, focusing on books like Caucasia by Dani Sienna and Colson Whitehead's John Brown Days. 

2003 was the year of Two Towns the Play. We had a grant to create a dramatic presentation with monologues based on stories from our community. This theatrical project about experiences of race in this community was written by professional local writers and performed by professional actors for the community at Seton Hall University.    

2005 was our largest arts project to date.  Through a grant from the America Composers Forum, composer Janet Albright visited our community and wrote a commissioned musical work for us that was performed with amateur and professional musicians and singers in front of more than two thousand people at Flood's Hill in South Orange-- the amazing Two Towns in Harmony!  

In the five years since that huge project, we have brought diverse groups of residents together on a smaller scale with our Two Towns Sing-Ins.  This ongoing musical project,supported by grants, offers workshops for singers from novices to professionals.  They have learned a variety of vocal music, ranging from Gospel to Jewish Contemporary to chants from Central Africa to the Old American Songs collection of Aaron Copland.  Top notch, local, professional performers and conductors, including recording artist Peri Smilow, ethno-musicologist Ahmondylla Best, concert pianist Richard C. Alston, Cantor Perry Fine, mezzo-soprano Lori Mirabal (previous five pictured above), as well as professional music conductor Jason Asbury, have led and performed with the community singers.

We have also continued to use the dramatic arts to look at integration in our community. Our Conversations on Race Forums have used the dramatic arts to portray racially charged issues to an audience who afterwards engage in open, honest, and challenging dialogue in response to the issues enacted.  Using techniques similar to those of Playback Theater, we collect stories of racial situations from community members and, with a troupe of 4-5 racially diverse, professional actors, prepare improvisations. These scenarios are acted for an audience who afterwards engage in open, honest, and challenging dialogue in response to the issues enacted. 

Read more...  

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.     --Margaret Mead

We have all types of volunteer opportunities, from single, short projects, to occasional office help, to regular committee participation.  Are you a professional or talented amateur graphics designer? Do you like to plan events or work on fundraisers?  Do you like to write? We could really use your help this year.

Click to visit the Committees page on our website to find out what each of our committees is working on.  If you support the Coalition's efforts to create true integration in our Two Towns, please call the office at 973-761-6116 or email us at info@twotowns.org and VOLUNTEER!