DDP Talks To Anna Lisa Wilkins (Development Associate and Grants Manager)
Ballet Rhode Island
Your community engagement program ProviDANCE is designed to serve students with the aim of engaging underserved communities. How did you determine the need for this initiative in your community? As it develops, what research is done to determine which schools and students are specifically targeted?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ballet Rhode Island (formerly Festival Ballet Providence) had considerable time to reflect on past practices and programming, as well as our role within the community that has supported and celebrated us for almost 50 years. With almost half of the Providence population identifying as BIPOC, we noted a difference between the robust cultural representation of our community and the representation within our staff, faculty, company dancers, and school. The idea of the ProviDANCE Afterschool Program was born to target this difference and create meaningful, long term change that would not only impact Ballet RI and the greater dance industry as a whole, but also the entire state of Rhode Island.
Ballet RI utilizes multiple factors to determine which schools and student populations to engage. Specifically, Ballet RI targets schools that engage underserved communities (Title 1 Schools), students who partially meet or do not meet ELA expectations, and families with median household income below the national average. By targeting schools that have limited to non-existent arts programming and arts education, Ballet RI can create meaningful change in students, impacting their social, emotional, and physical well-being, as well as notably improving in their literacy scores as compared to their peers not enrolled in ProviDANCE.
You track a variety of specific outcomes to show the impact of this program, including student’s literacy assessments and reading proficiency scores. What other metrics are tracked, what data do you currently have in each of these areas, and how do these outcomes impact the evolution of this program over time?
Ballet RI maintains an active and open relationship with each school administration to better track and analyze student data as they move through the ProviDANCE Afterschool Program. Ballet RI is specifically interested in demographic and economic data, ESL data, and test scores as compared with their peers not enrolled in the ProviDANCE AfterSchool Program. Additionally, Ballet RI utilizes student surveys and academic teacher feedback to best shape programming. Demographic and economic data confirms that Ballet RI is targeting underserved youth who would not otherwise have access to after-school and/or arts education programming. Academic data provides a direct link between our programming and a quantitative outcome that shows the benefits of arts education programming beyond the obvious social, emotional, and physical benefits. Because the program remains small, it is manageable to track the data by school. At the end of each school year, schools provide Ballet RI with requested data to compare and analyze to previous years. The data allows Ballet RI to shape future programming and ensure ProviDANCE has the greatest impact on students. Through continued program reflection and data accumulation, ProviDANCE is able to continuously evolve and progress.
This most recent school year, 25 ProviDANCE students advanced into the Academy classes and 6 students matriculated into the Core Ballet Program. How do you track and review these student’s continued success throughout the academy? How do you continue to support underserved students beyond this specific initiative?
While in the Academy, students are still part of the ProviDANCE Afterschool Program and as such are still under the umbrella of community outreach programming. They are still supported through ProviDANCE funding, and program administrators track students’ success through the program. Once students graduate out of ProviDANCE Afterschool Program, they are eligible and encouraged to apply for Ballet RI’s Derrick Davis Memorial Scholarship program, which can support them through high school graduation at Ballet RI School. The Scholarship, designed to fund tuition and materials fees for BIPOC youth pursuing a dance education, helps support students post-ProviDANCE Afterschool program. The goal was to provide a pathway for students, from their first introduction to live performance art to high-quality professional dance training. In this way, underserved youth who have long been discouraged or unable to pursue an arts education, have the opportunity to experience the highest quality dance education and all of the benefits that come along with arts education.
