Press Release
For Immediate Release
May 2, 2005

CONTACT:
Sally Salkowski Witte
Executive Director
Artists Working in Education, Inc.
2819 W. Highland Blvd.
Milwaukee, WI 53208
(414) 933-3877

Artists Working in Education (AWE, Inc.) has recently learned that it will receive a $20,000 Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant will allow AWE to boost its summer Truck Studio arts enrichment program. Summer 2005 will mark a significant change in the depth and quality of AWE’s informal art enrichment experience. AWE Truck Studios are four brightly-painted vans that deliver art teachers, interns, and art supplies to children at 18 urban Milwaukee parks for one- and two-week periods.

In 2004 AWE successfully experimented with extended two-week stays at four of the parks, resulting in collaborative artwork which was later displayed at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Forest Home Avenue Library, Clinton Rose Senior Center and other sites. This year, AWE will increase the number of two-week parks to six along a focused theme, “Great Artists Build Great Communities.” The children’s work will be celebrated with a community-wide exhibit in September at a major public venue, demonstrating the value of their artistic expression to both the children and the wider community.

With “Great Artists Build Great Communities,” AWE’s dedicated staff will stimulate creative visual expression with children and families in Milwaukee’s most challenged neighborhoods in deeper and more meaningful ways than ever before. Between June 27 and August 5, 2005, AWE’s “Fleet of Imagination” – four brightly-painted vans stocked with art supplies – will visit 6 parks every day for two weeks and 12 parks every day for one week between the hours of 1 and 4 p.m.

For many Milwaukee children, the Truck Studio may provide their only access to art instruction. With recent budget cuts, 47 Milwaukee Public Schools have no art teacher on staff. Others have reduced their art teacher to half time or less.

Founded in 1998, AWE, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide youth in the Milwaukee area with arts enrichment programs to enhance human potential, advance learning and cultivate community. Its two main initiatives are the School Studio, an artist-in-residence program designed to advance learning through the arts; and the Truck Studio, an outreach program providing free art experiences for children in inner city parks during the summer months.

AWE receives major funding from the Windhover Foundation, Four-Four Foundation, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Herzfeld Foundation, Buck Foundation, A.O. Smith Foundation, the Milwaukee Arts Board, Einhorn Family Foundation, Bank One, Weiss Family Foundation, Joseph Johnson Charitable Trust, the Wisconsin Designer Crafts Council, Woman’s Club of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Arts Board. For more information contact Sally Salkowski Witte, AWE Executive Director, at (414) 933-3877.