Workshops and Residencies
2021-2022 Programs
At Claxton Elementary School, our Specialist Team is committed to providing opportunities for students to be exposed to the arts by individuals outside of our school. It is wonderful to connect students with resources in our local Asheville community as well as around the world through technology. Our Specialists continue to explore possibilities with our Workshops and Residencies program within the current school health and safety protocols.
Fifth Grade "Inside Out Music Program" TAPAAS Residency
Claxton 5th graders in Ms. Martin's class have been working with visiting teaching artists in a T.A.P.A.A.S. (Teaching Artists Presenting in Asheville Area Schools) Residency program sponsored by the Asheville City Schools Foundation. The "Inside Out Music Program" residency is a collaboration between the Asheville Writers in the Schools & Community and the Echo Mountain Recording Studio. Music producers, recording engineers and recording artists have spent five music lessons working with the 5th graders on crafting their own lyrics and musical pieces using digital recording technology. Rhyming activities have led to students crafting lyrical content and hands-on experience with digital musical instruments have given opportunities to create recorded music. Our residency culminated on Wednesday, May 11th and we will soon be sharing the resulting music here and on our social media channels and on our Community Step-Up Night at the school on June 2nd.
Ms. Martin's 5th graders works with teaching artist, lyricist, and music producer "Po'Folk Larry" learning to use Ableton Push digital recording devices.
Learning to keep time and craft beats in digital music software.
Third Grade New Monuments Workshops
Happening March - April 2022! Student art expo to be held on April 8th. More info to come!
Fifth Grade Drum Building Residency
October 2021
Claxton has a wonderful tradition of having 5th graders build and customize their own ashiko hand drums with resident artist Steven Turner of Giving Tree Music. Giving Tree Music is an amazing non-profit organization that empowers community building through drumming. Our amazing Claxton PTO sponsors this project and this year we again had a generous donation of materials from our local East Asheville Home Depo to help make it happen. Each year Claxton 5th graders tie-die genuine goat skin drum heads, sand and paint the drum shell, and attach the head to the body of the drum.
This school year our drum building residency took place October 12st through 15th. The residency culminated with drumming performances by 5th graders for the school community and at L.E.A.F. (the Lake Eden Arts Festival) led by Steven Turner. To learn more about Giving Tree Music, check out their website: www.givingtreemusic.com.
Enjoy a slide show of photos from our Giving Tree Music drum building residency!
Second Grade Monarch Butterfly Workshops
Fall 2021
Monarchs 21-22.mp4