January 9, 2018

Ovations Offstage (O2) has many measures of success to determine if our programming has reach and impact. One of these indicators is when an O2 staff member is invited to present at local, regional or national conferences. Invitations of this nature indicate that there is an audience and a demand for our particular brand of arts education and outreach programming, and allow us to reach new educators, professional peers, and partners.

In 2017, our Offstage Director, Catherine M. Anderson was the keynote speaker at the Maine National Association of the Education of the Young Child (NAEYC) on Cultivating Curiosity: Storytelling Through Music, Movement and Play.

In 2018 Catherine will be presenting at two regional conferences: the first is the Northeast Educational Theater Festival later this month hosted by the Maine Chapter at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham, and later in March at the Maine Arts Commission’s Maine Leadership Initiative (MALI) Mega Conference in Oxford Hills, Maine. In addition to presenting, Catherine will be attending the International Performing Arts for Youth Conference (IPAY) to be held in Philadelphia, PA at the end of January for several days. IPAY is an incredible opportunity for international youth-focused performers, artists, agents and presenters to come together to share new work, exchange ideas, grapple with trends and build on existing cohort groups, while making new acquaintances.

Seeing works of all genres, geared to audiences of all ages, in venues of all sizes and types around a thriving arts city with your professional peers is a total emergence experience that I look forward to all year,” Anderson says. “There is such a complex range of offerings available for young people. To stay current and curious about the performing arts possibilities for the Southern Maine student population is one of the greatest joys of this job.”

Each time O2 has the opportunity to demonstrate our arts integration curriculum that is designed to engage and support classroom learning and complex thinking around topics ranging from literacy acquisition, to how to attend a performance to bias and prejudice in the world, we are providing educators with new resources to enhance student learning.