City Lore and P.S. 11 and P.S. 78 in Queens, have partnered to develop a curriculum model and strategies for integrating the arts into the social studies curriculum in grades 2-6. Our program design supports student inquiry and community-based research into social studies content as inspiration for original student artwork. City Lore's experienced teaching artists provide skills- based instruction in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Central to all of our programs is the integration of folk arts into the curriculum. Folk arts are the traditional artistic expressions of a group of people who share a common identity. Embedded in the daily lives, celebrations, and ritual events of families and communities, they are a rich resource for student explorations into the role of the arts in their own lives and in other cultures.

Through this partnership, we have developed several models for integrating folk arts and artists into the arts and social studies curricula. These model programs involve folk artists as primary teaching artists or as collaborators in residencies designed to explore the cultural traditions of a particular people (E.g.: a Puerto Rican bomba y plena residency); team teaching by a folk artist and an artist with a fine arts background (E.g.: a theater artist working with a traditional Mexican dancer and mural artist to teach about the role of the arts in the Mexican Revolution); guest folk artists whose art form inspires students' original art work with their teaching artist or school art/music specialist (E.g.: a guest Chinese lantern maker inspires students' lanterns that incorporate images and text from family interviews).

Project models vary according to the grade-level social studies curricula. Third graders learn traditional art forms of Africa Asia, or Latin America; fourth graders create visual artwork based on their research into their own family and cultural traditions as part of their study of immigration and migration to New York; fifth graders create a dance play based on their exploration of one group's history and experiences immigrating to the United States; and sixth graders create a theater piece based on a myth, legend, folktale, or historical event of the Eastern Hemisphere. These residencies also encourage student discussions about artists' training and inspiration, including the ways the artists’ cultural background influences and shapes their art, and how they engage their communities through their art work.

During the 2007-2008 school year, our teaching artists will provide instruction in visual arts, music, dance, and theater for 21 teachers and 450 students in grades 3 through 6 at P.S. 11 and P.S. 78. The program emphasis is to document, refine, and reflect on the models, unit plans, and best practices that our partnership has developed and to create audio-visual, print, and web resources to share our work between schools and with the wider arts education community.