When Josephine Clapper walks into Bass Performance Hall, she first notices the size.
The statues. The open space. The stairways. The feeling that the building itself is part of the performance.
“It’s just really beautiful,” Clapper said, a recent graduate of Fort Worth ISD’s I.M. Terrell Academy for STEM and Visual Performing Arts. “It encapsulates the arts very beautifully.”
Clapper returned to the Bass Hall complex on May 12 as one of six students honored during Performing Arts Fort Worth’s Children’s Education Program Annual Awards Luncheon.
Clapper is a violist who plans to attend Drake University in Iowa and double major in kinesiology and music. For the musician, the visits to Bass Hall — most of which were field trips — have become transcendental.
“Anytime I come here, I leave feeling inspired,” Clapper said. “When you come here, you get to see real professionals doing it. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s what I could become.’”
That is the point of the Children’s Education Program, Performing Arts Fort Worth leaders said.
Bass Hall expects to welcome its 2 millionth student or educator this fall. Since the venue opened in 1998, the Children’s Education Program has offered student matinees, summer camps, literacy programs, workshops, student ticketing, virtual programming and other arts education opportunities, according to Performing Arts Fort Worth.
Each year, over 70,000 students and teachers attend free education performances through the program. Its partnership with Fort Worth ISD ensures every district student in first through fifth grade participates, while other programming reaches middle and high school students across Fort Worth, Tarrant County and North Texas.
Taylor Woods, Performing Arts Fort Worth’s director of education and community engagement, said the program is built around the idea that students are not simply future arts patrons.
They are already part of the community.
“When a student walks through our doors and takes in a show, participates in an intensive or engages in a talkback, our hope is that experience not only teaches them, but inspires creativity, stimulates conversations and encourages them to consider other points of view,” Woods said.
The annual luncheon recognized students and educators in theater, dance, vocal performance and music.
Honorees in attendance included I.M. Terrell Academy graduates Clapper, dancer Kenzie Edwards, bassoonist Alec Santos and French hornist John Michael Schwind, and thespian Conrad Myers and vocalist Jiles Clark were also recognized. The event also honored educators and performers, including Diamond Hill-Jarvis High School dance teacher Kacee Dobbins and McLean Middle School band director Christa Martien.
Dance director and I.M. Terrell alumni Christen Reyes and Performing Arts Fort Worth board member Jennifer Giddings Brooks with I.M. Terrell Academy Arts Achievement Award winners John Michael Schwind, Josephine Clapper, Kenzie Edwards and Alec Santos. (Courtesy | Performing Arts Fort Worth, Kimberly Lang Photography)
The awards are part of a broader effort to make Bass Hall feel accessible to students who might otherwise never attend a live performance there, said Patricia Linares, a Performing Arts Fort Worth board member and former Fort Worth ISD interim superintendent.
“Without these opportunities, many children might never have the chance to visit Bass Hall or experience the transformative power of live performance and the arts,” Linares said.
The program’s numbers show its reach. Since 1998, student matinees have drawn more than 1.6 million participants. The literacy program has distributed 98,847 books. Summer performing arts camps have served 5,809 students over 14 years, according to the organization.
For Schwind, another recent I.M. Terrell graduate honored at the luncheon, the most meaningful visits were not only performances. They were rehearsals.
“You really got to see a bit of the process itself,” Schwind said.
Schwind plans to attend Rochester Institute of Technology in New York state to study mechanical engineering. But he said music will remain part of his life.
“I do not ever want to stop playing French horn,” he said.
Though Schwind is headed into a STEM field, he said the arts have shaped the way he thinks.
That combination matters, he said.
“So often we focus on things like STEM,” Schwind said. “But the combination of the two, they’re both so valuable in the different perspectives you can gain.”
The arts have taught Clapper a different lesson: Connection.
She began high school as a violinist before switching to viola her sophomore year. She plans to become a physical therapist, but she wants to continue music in college and, eventually, through a community orchestra or another outlet.
“The arts can do that,” Clapper said. “They bring people together.”
The luncheon is meant to celebrate those students and educators while reflecting on the program’s broader mission, said Dione Kennedy, president and CEO of Performing Arts Fort Worth.
“This year’s awards honor students and educators who, through a thorough adjudication process, have been selected for their excellence in theater, dance, vocal performance and music,” Kennedy said.
But the program’s leaders also framed the event as a reminder that access has to be sustained.
The program is free to students and educators because of support from donors, corporations, foundations and community partners, leaders said.
The value is not only in seeing a show, said Jason Wise, Performing Arts Fort Worth’s senior vice president of operations. It is in what happens when students gather with peers from other schools and see the world from another perspective.
“Live theater allows us to forget the outside world for a while and share in the same magical experience, together,” Wise said.
That is what the arts do for many students, Clapper said.
“Even if they know nothing about it, they can just relate it to their own experiences and know that it’s important,” she said.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
Disclosure: FWISD manager Pete Geren leads the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. FWISD manager Laurie George is a member of the Report’s reader advisory council. News decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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