![]() Giant Puppet Dance Club members are Falk students in grades 6–8 who meet weekly to create and learn choreographed dances while wearing giant puppets-whimsical, brightly colored, full-body puppets that extend a few feet above students’ heads. A lot of the kids say that’s really freeing.” “But when you put yourself in a giant puppet, you can dance around and nobody knows who you are. “Middle school can be a time where kids feel self-conscious,” says Capezzuti. So, I am driven to expand access so that authorship, critique and the shaping of what we know can be driven by all, and what we take for granted or natural can shift, and to keep our definition of the arts, fervently open.Of all the afterschool programs available to students at the University of Pittsburgh Fanny Edel Falk Laboratory School, the Giant Puppet Dance Club might be the most unexpected.īut, as visual arts teacher Cheryl Capezzuti notes, middle schoolers are drawn to the larger-than-life club that introduces them to the magic of puppetry. And we will not realize the full power of the arts if our iconographies and methodologies are dictated by the very few. We will not experience the full power of the arts unless access to the means of representation is available to all. ![]() And our newly formed Arts Advocacy Council, composed of outstanding leaders in the arts, including Arts Division alumni, help us to enact our future, informed by their expertise, experience and care for public higher education. Our Third Thursday Sesnon Salons join together faculty, staff, students to celebrate the latest and greatest achievements of our departments and programs. Our Institute for Arts and Sciences, the Arts Research Institute and the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery offer research, exhibitions and community engagementto the public beyond the campus. The Arts Professional Pathways program demystifies careers and provides financial support for internships and the dissemination of student work. Our success in securing grants from the UC-Hispanic Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative (UC-HSI DDI) and the UC Office of the President Advancing Faculty Diversity(UCOP-AFD) affirms our efforts in becoming a leader in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion through the Arts. This year, we pay attention to the role of mentorship and establishing best practices in our institution as we diversify the faculty, decolonize the curriculum and continue to create pipelines of collaboration across and beyond the university. Staff contribute to the university’s mission at the forefront of our efforts in student success. Faculty advance knowledge and develop new technologies while offering a curriculum that shines a light on the historically marginalized. Our students develop their highest critical, analytic, historical, theoretical and practical capabilities and learn how to think within social and historical contexts so they may imagine new institutions and find the most effective ways to contribute to our society. We are creating new knowledge that impacts the world through innovation that is inclusive and excellence that is equitable.
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