Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

We asked our Facebook friends to share their Halloween-related activities with us. Here’s what they had to say (you can click on each of the headers for their respective websites):

Harmonium Choral Society

Family-Friendly Halloween Concert presented by Harmonium Choral Society and Grace Community Music on Sunday, October 30th at 3 p.m. at Grace Church, Madison, NJ. $5 per person or $15 per family & a non-perishable food donation at the door. The concert is appropriate for ages 3-300. Costumes welcome! For more information: 973-377-0106 x17.

Featuring the Grace Church School Choirs (50 choristers ages 7-17), Gargoyles (teen guys a capella), the Harmonium Chamber Singers & Outreach Chorus, and spooky organ music. From Bach to Rock, from Grieg to Michael Jackson, pirates, spiders, nursery rhymes and more! Dr. Anne Matlack, directing.

West Windsor Arts Center

West Windsor Arts Center community dance on Saturday, October 29th from 7:00 to 9:00pm. Ballroom dance instruction 7:00-7:30 followed by open dance. Costumes encouraged, but not required. Tickets $12 / $10 members / $6 students including a refreshment. For more information, go to www.westwindsorarts.org or call 609.716.1931

Lustig Dance Theatre

LDT’s 2nd Anniversary Celebration Performance at Middlesex County College on October 23rd at 3:30pm will have a post-performance Halloween Costume Contest! The performance will conclude with Graham Lustig’s “Luna Mexicana,” inspired by Day of the Dead.

We will also host a Halloween Party at our New Brunswick Studio on October 30 from 3-4:30 with games, crafts, spooky treats and Halloween glitter tattoos. Call 732-246-7300 for more info or visit www.lustigdancetheatre.org.

Center for Contemporary Art

On Thursday, Oct. 20th volunteers from The Center for Contemporary Art and Starbucks will hold a children’s pumpkin painting workshop from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Pumpkins, paints and decorative dazzle will await you and your child – just bring your creativity and a smile. From silly to spooky your creation will surely be the talk of your block!

To participate, contact Ellen Rannells, Special Events Coordinator at 908.234.2345 or erannells@ccabedminster.org. The Center is located at 2020 Burnt Mills Road in Bedminster.

Arts Council of the Morris Area

Pumpkin carvers of all ages are invited to bring their masterpieces to the Vail Mansion on South Street in Morristown on October 30th and display them along the reflecting pool for all to enjoy. Bring your already carved pumpkin to this free community event, and at 5pm enjoy Scary Storytelling at Mayo Center for the Arts followed by the Pumpkin Illumination at 6pm. You may drop your pumpkin off at the Vail Mansion at 4:45 if you are planning on attending the storytelling event!

A Cemetery Tour from 5pm-6pm will also be offered – reservations can be made through the Morris County Tourism Bureau. The Cemetery Tour concludes at the Vail Mansion at 6pm.

A very special guest at this year’s event will be Grow It Green Morristown’s – giant pumpkin! If you haven’t heard about this Pumpkin, watch this short video!

Discover Jersey Arts

And don’t miss Discover Jersey Arts’ Halloween Guide to scare up some more Halloween fun.

If you have more activities to add, leave them in the comments section below. And if you aren’t already there, please join our community on Facebook!

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Michele Russo, Poetry Coordinator

We’re pretty excited.  This fall, we’re visiting High Schools that have never hosted a Dodge Poetry Event before.  They may have attended the Dodge Poetry Festival or attended another High School’s Mini-Festival.  The teachers may have participated in Clearing the Spring, Tending the Fountain. This year they took the leap to invite the poets directly into their building.  Here’s a preview of what’s happening this Fall:

• The Academy of the Holy Angels in Demarest, NJ is hosting a Dodge Poet Visit with Patrick Phillips.
• Belvidere High School in Warren County is hosting a Mini-Festival featuring BJ Ward and Maria Mazziotti Gillan.
• North Star Academy Charter High School in Newark is hosting a Mini-Festival featuring Newark native Kyle Dargan.  We’re working on the rest of the line-up.
• Spotswood High School is hosting a Mini-Festival featuring Joe Weil and Emari DiGiorgio.
• St. Mary’s High School in Elizabeth is hosting a Poet Visit with John Murillo.
• University High School in Newark is hosting a Poet Visit. We’re working on setting that up.

Dodge Poet Visits and Dodge Poetry Mini-Festivals are a chance for high school students to explore poetry with accomplished, published Dodge Poets. Dodge Poets give students a way to relate to poetry that is interesting and relevant to them, and through their modeling of curiosity and discovery, encourage students to be lifelong readers and poetry lovers.

We are scheduling more events for the 2011-2012 school year, and we’ll give you an update in a few months. We co-sponsor Poet Visits and Mini-Festivals according to each school’s financial need.  We identify and schedule your Dodge Poets, ensuring that your event is meaningful for your students.

If you think you’d like a Dodge Poetry event in your high school, contact Michele Russo, Poetry Coordinator at mrusso@grdodge.org or 973-540-8442 x113.

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Support the Dodge Poetry Archive and Poetry Program. Click here.
Or visit our pop up shop – all proceeds go to the Dodge Poetry Program!

Did you know that the Dodge Poetry Program has a YouTube channel? Take a look – view video clips from past biennial Festivals! You can also join the conversation on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter @dodgepoetryfest. See you there!

Michele Russo, Poetry Coordinator

Several of us on the Dodge staff made it to Art All Night in Trenton last weekend.  What an amazing event!  Hundreds and hundreds of artworks were on display—artists as young as 10 months old to artists who have clearly worked over many years honing their vision and their craft.  There were artists creating work on the spot, great music, food, and a few interactive projects for us to join in.

There was no way to experience it all, which in its own way was freeing.  Often when I go to an exhibit, I feel a pressure to “see it all” and “get it all” but at Art All Night, I found myself simply wandering and allowing myself to connect with whatever artwork was speaking to me at that moment.  When I talked with my colleagues who’d attended, I was amazed to find out that we each saw things the others did not. That’s how rich it was.  Our congratulations go to the staff and volunteers of Artworks for their tireless work in producing such an ambitious event.

Below you’ll find some photos that my colleagues and I took at the event.  We apologize that we did not write down the artists’ names to credit them in this blog post. We are trying to identify the artists, but if you happen to know them or be one of them, let us know and we’ll post it.

Dandelion by Kate Sparacio

By Michelle Knapik
Environment Program Director

Art met industrial history and invited the City of Paterson, aka Silk City, to re-imagine itself, to connect past and present, and to listen to voices and visions of transformation. Last Saturday, the Paterson Arts Council curated…Paterson! The 2011 Arts Walk came to life as volunteers converted vacant mills, green spaces, restaurants and businesses into compelling exhibition spaces.

To lovers of urban architecture, Industry Mill, Congdon Mill and Harmony Mill are in and of themselves art in terms of early twentieth century architectural design, but to most, they stand as abandoned relics of Paterson’s past glory. During the Art Walk, though, floor after floor of mill space was punctuated by visual art, performance art, music and poetry. The event was, in essence, a one day pass to peer into the industrial past, be inspired by more than 200 artists, and think about the potential of the mills to permanently support the creative, industrious and immigrant spirit of the city.

The vaulting ceilings, the sometimes painted, sometimes exposed brick, the near full story windows, the interior columns – these stunning, sometimes eerie features provided the blank slate for the exhibitions. Clearly, the art work graced the buildings, but at times the architectural elements graced the paintings, photographs and installations.

I spent most of my time in Industry Mill – an expansive and impressive five story edifice that alone showcased 45 artists. Climbing the stairs, I passed old work safety posters, which ushered in thoughts of productivity and manufacturing madness.

But one foot in the converted space and the thoughts turned to the arts as a force for social change. One installation featured images of abandoned spaces, another focused on mixed wood and paint for a grounded whimsical effect.

A board member of the Paterson Arts Council, Giovawna Cecchetti, talked about her 1995 “shadow series” that brought her face to face with emotional wounds that had kept her from facing her future. Her newer series on healing themes defines her now, but the shadow series spoke to the space and the notion of confronting the past and present in order to permanently convert these buildings into new uses.

The artists and Arts Council members have no shortage of what they’d like to see happen in these spaces. Artists studios, teaching and training space, artist housing, exhibition space. They want arts to anchor and stimulate the rebirth of these old buildings, as well as to serve as an economic engine for the city.

A similar event is about to take place this weekend in Trenton. Art All Night 2011 will transform the Roebling Wire Works factory and its environs into a 24 hour gallery and exhibition experience (from 3 pm on Saturday, June 18, to 3 pm on Sunday, June 19). The event features more than 800 diverse artists and various art mediums. Art re-awakens the historic factory space and signals that Trenton’s creative class is ready to fuel broader scale redevelopment.

These initiatives are becoming signature events in New Jersey’s older industrial centers. They attract and provide benefits for local and global artists. They build community and bring a sense of celebration to these urban spaces. They may be temporary exhibitions, but they result in lasting impacts and social change.

How are arts affecting redevelopment in the places you know and love?

Link here for a video and report on the Arts Walk.

Link here to connect with Sustainable Jersey to see how your town can earn points toward certification by incorporating Arts, Culture and Historic Preservation efforts.

Link here to explore Creative New Jersey’s first series of answers to the question of how creativity and innovation can revitalize New Jersey.

Over the past two days, more than 150 people participated in the Creative New Jersey conference, discussing how creativity and innovation can help revitalize New Jersey. (See this earlier blog post for background on the conference).

This was no ordinary conference, with the agenda predetermined. Rather, the conference followed an “open space” format, which has minimal structure. As shown in the photos below, participants set the agenda for the two days by suggesting topics for discussion and posting them on large sheets of paper to the “Marketplace” wall, labeled with a time and meeting room where the conversation would take place. Participants then chose from the Marketplace which conversations they wanted to join throughout the two days, remembering that if they weren’t feeling engaged or inspired by the discussion, they could leave at any time and join a different one (the “rule of two feet”).

Discussions covered a huge range of topics, including “How do we create meaningful work for young people?” and “How can we use public space to inspire innovation and revitalize communities?” as well as “Teaching to and measuring for creativity” and “If you have all the political support and money you needed (!) what would be your crazy BIG IDEA to encourage creativity and innovation in NJ?”

Even those are just a small fraction of what took place.

Intrigued? You should be. There was no shortage of ideas, connections made and meaningful conversations.  And thanks to a coordinated effort and effective use of technology, all of these discussions have been captured and shared in real time on the CreativeNJ website. There, you can also find short, interesting interviews of the conference’s participants, as well as information about who was at the conference, and a gallery of photos.

It’s a lot of information and ideas to absorb – whether you were there or not. We urge you to take a look and get inspired, but we also urge you to take your time looking over the website to see what sparks your imagination (you can search by areas of interest), and revisit it occasionally.

Dodge helped sponsor and lead this effort because we care about the future livability of New Jersey – we’re focused on the issues that our home state faces and believe in supporting creativity, which we know takes on many different forms. We continually strive to bring people together in new and unexpected ways: we want to help spark ideas, make connections, and help you discover new resources.

Now that the conference is over, we have some questions for those who participated, but also for those of you who are thinking about the issues that New Jersey faces:

How do we keep the conversation and the momentum going?
What connections with other people and/or resources do you need help making?

Dodge has an arsenal of resources to offer: we make grants, of course, but we also have capacity building workshops to help you strengthen your organization as well as a suite of other financial and legal services that we underwrite. We can help you convene groups of people and make cross-sector connections, and we can offer you the conference space in which to hold meetings too. And as a foundation working solely on issues that impact New Jersey, we can also offer you our staff’s expertise, which we have developed over many years of criss-crossing the state, meeting with stakeholders from all sectors.

If you have ideas, questions, or comments, we want to hear them. Post them in the comments section below and help us keep the conversation rolling.

Images: Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation