Educational Mission

VIA believes the future of new art lives in education.  All Via Artists are experienced and committed teachers.  Members of the collective have taugt and conducted education residencies at the Whitney Museum in collaboration with Youth Insights, the New York Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, Presbyterian University, Dickinson College, Hofstra University, and Etna Fest in Italy.  Each VIA project has a designed education segment offered for high school or college.  The VIA collective is comprised of artists from diverse backgrounds and countries including Mexico, Iran, Serbia, Italy, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay, Canada, and the US.  VIA collaborates with artists from around the world.  It is this cultural synthesis that helps VIA create works which reflect this plural understanding of American society.  VIA believes this international and political bent, and inclusiveness attracts larger diverse audiences and contributes to a larger dialogue.

Young Visionaries

Young Visionaries was a program that focused on bringing music technology and contemporary works to aspiring composers and songwriters in high school.  The residency lasted for five years at Brandeis High School (NYC), and was developed with the music department.  The students used Mac computers to create musical works that entail live sampling, recording, writing lyrics, and production techniques.

Young Visionaries was geared toward the production of a record involving the multiple disciplines represented in VisionIntoArt.  Students were mentored through the process of composing on Garage Band, while learning to use basic compositional techniques and software.  They were guided through standard notation, working with live recorded tracks by the VIA ensemble and learning about basic instrumentation issues, fluent use of Garage band and basic use of Logic Express.VisionIntoArt partnered with the American Composers Orchestra and Young Audiences NY for this program.

Identity Sketches & The Artist Toolbox

VIA artists guide students through the basic elements and techniques of their individual art forms with the overarching question: How do you, the artist, express your identity through your art form?  Each discipline is introduced through personal interviews about identity with members of VIA.  Students are encouraged to participate in the interview process.  Students then choose a discipline to explore, and work with VIA artists on musicianship, writing, spoken-word performance, dance technique, and theater direction.  Students begin crafting their own identity pieces with coaching from VIA artists.  Finally, by repeating this discovery process with an artist of a different discipline, students integrate interdisciplinary approach into their creation of a final identity piece.  Depending on the length of this master-class, further development and performance of these works is optional.