AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE WALKING TOURS OF CAPE MAY

Scheduled for Jazz Festival Weekend

The Center for Community Arts Community History Program presents its African American Heritage Walking Tour of Cape May:

*

Saturday, November 13 at 10:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m.

Sunday, Nov. 14 at 10:30 a.m.
*

The tours depart from CCA’s office at 712 Lafayette Street (the yellow house next to the yellow church, near the corner of Franklin St.), and last approximately 80 minutes. Guides relate Cape May’s untold stories as they walk the west side of downtown, from rumors of Harriet Tubman, to the blacks-only beaches and USO, the thriving African American business, social and religious community, the impact of Urban Renewal and the fate of the segregated Franklin Street School.

*

$10 adults, $7 age 6-12. Call 884-7525 for further info.

*

The Center for Community Arts received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission. This program is supported in part by grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and many generous businesses and individuals.

CULTURAL CROSSROADS PROJECT - PERFORMANCES

Public performances of “Our Families, Our Histories: A Cultural Crossroads,” will be Wednesday, November 10, at the Wildwood High School Auditorium, and Friday, November 12, at the Richard M. Teitelman School Auditorium.

*

Performances of these short plays, written by junior high school students, begin at 7:00 p.m., and admission is free.

*

The performances are the culmination of an artist residency made possible by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation of Baltimore, MD, and the Center for Community Arts. The Foundation’s Artists & Communities program provides opportunities for professional artists to partner with nonprofit organizations in projects involving active cultural participation by members of the host community. These projects serve to motivate and encourage people to examine issues of importance in their community.

*

Center for Community Arts (CCA) collaborated with Philadelphia poet and playwright Magda Martinez, who worked with 70 students in the Richard M. Teitelman and Wildwood Junior High Schools since September. Martinez taught the students to conduct interviews of family members, transform those interviews into stories, and then into short plays. The students also worked with CCA Executive Director Steve Bacher, who is a theater director, their classroom teachers and after-school counselors on the writing process and to produce the plays for public performance. The students will also perform the plays in school-day assemblies for their peers.

*

In addition to the 70 student writer-performers, the project involves art students at the Teitelman School who are making the stage back drop, and participants in CCA’s Wildwood YAP (Youth Arts Program), who are making props for the shows.

*

Faculty leadership on the project is being provided by Nancy Sandman at Wildwood Junior High School, and Gail Schmidtchen and Kathy McDuell at the Richard M. Teitelman School.

Martinez is a recipient of an Independence Foundation Fellowship and a member of the board of the Bartol Foundation. She received the Leeway Foundation's Windows of Opportunity Grant in 2001 for the development and staged reading of "Converse Sneakers", which was performed in Denver with "El Centro Su Teatro".

*

In addition to the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the program’s many components are made possible in part by grants from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Byrne Fund of Wildwood, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and many generous businesses and individuals.

*

For further info call 884-7525.