Waynesboro Writes demonstrates the development of writing and thinking skills of Waynesboro’s elementary students. The publication includes all four Waynesboro elementary schools. Each school annually selects the best student writing from kindergarten through fifth grade.

Free copies of the publication will be available at the Waynesboro Heritage Museum, the Shenandoah Valley Art Center, Stone Soup Books and Cafe and the Waynesboro Public Library. To read samples from previous editions, click here.

Waynesboro Writes is one of the many projects of the Cultural Commission to support community writing, among them workshops on topics such as the personal essay, fiction writing, and screenwriting. To learn more, visit www.waynesboroculture.com.

The Storyline Project guides rising 4th-6th graders from the Charlottesville Parks & Rec summer camps through unique walking expeditions that culminate in the creation of a mural on the Community Chalkboard, followed by a public reception. This year’s theme is “Transit,” utilizing boats, bikes, and buses.

Storyline depends on a select group of volunteers from the creative community to help the children internalize their observations and express their perspectives through drawing and story-sharing. Successful volunteers are skilled listeners who, through active dialogue, encourage children to express themselves with their own words and perspectives. The job of the volunteers is to facilitate and encourage the creative process.

Parks & Recreation provides professional camp counselors. Thus, it is not the volunteer’s role to enforce discipline or meet the children’s safety or behavioral needs. This year’s project will take place on the mornings (8:30-12:30) of July 8-11. Participation in all days is preferred but not required.

There will be an interview process, a background check, and a mandatory orientation if you are selected as a volunteer. In addition, we are also looking for photographers, videographers, and designers to assist with documentation and mounting the exhibition about Storyline Project at the CitySpace Gallery in August.

To participate, please click here and complete the volunteer application.

Want more inspiration? Watch this amazing video about the Storyline Project by Squid and Beard.

The Storyline Project is sponsored by Piedmont Council for the Arts, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, Charlottesville Parks & Recreation, the Thomas Jefferson Center For the Protection of Free Speech, SiteWorks, and Community Bikes.

iConnect matches students with photographers and writers. Over the course of a week, they produce a book organized around a theme that the group explores in Charlottesville. This year’s theme is El Trabajo (work). The program’s director John Casteen describes it like this:

“An iConnect week starts slowly: a primer and refresher on aperture and shutter speed, a lesson on metaphor and simile. In both the visual and the linguistic: detail, detail, detail. Composition. Narrative. When we make our way into the city to find material and people at work, each student is paired with an individual mentor; cameras around their necks, they look, ask, talk, and look again. The mentors answer, ask back, look, write. The week carries us through the city’s neighborhoods and places of business: a furniture shop in full swing, an automotive garage taking a breather over the lunch hour, a barber shop full of chatter, television, and the sound of clippers, a restaurant breaking down lamb carcasses for the grill, a bright-lit room redolent of every spice imaginable. The week is a feast for the senses, a creative hothouse, a reason to keep going.”

The exhibit will remain on display through May 25. The Bridge PAI is located at 209 Monticello Road in Charlottesville. Admission to the gallery is FREE.

Josephine Foster is a modern American folk singer-songwriter and musician from Colorado. She has recorded albums of psychedelic rock, music for children, blues music, unorthodox interpretations of 19th century German Lieder, and a 27-song cycle based on the poems of Emily Dickinson. After her previous performance in Charlottesville in 2006, Foster relocated to rural Spain, collecting and arranging collections of folk songs.

In 2012, Foster returned to Colorado to record a new solo album titled Blood Rushing which took inspiration from local themes from her childhood such as the western geography, native rhythms, and imagined mythology. Listen to songs from the album as well as interview with Foster on NPR here.

Tickets cost $7 and are available for purchase online or at the door.

Lap The Miles Productions is a new booking outfit in Charlottesville, bringing independent music concerts to venues such as the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar.

In-class exercises will introduce the important principles of layout and design. Through lecture and exercises students will study the basics of design including rhythm, scale, texture, framing, layers, transparency, and modularity. Students will study the history of type and learn the different character and voice of different type designs.

Study of the letter itself will include a look at the essentials of glyph design with a special understanding of typefitting, logotypes, and the use of special characters. We will explore the intricacy of kerning and tracking and learn how type can be used to express a hierarchy of communication on a page through styles, color, and sizes.

An in-depth investigation of the grid and its use in page layout will illuminate the key to communicating with elegance and effect. Hands-on projects and oral critiques will explore the processes of building the page for a poster, a website, a magazine article, and a booklet.

The course will meet for ten weeks on Saturday mornings 10:00am-12:00pmm starting May 25 and ending on July 27.
Tuition is $1000 and the course is eligible for the UVa Education Benefit. For members of the VABC, the cost is $950. There is one scholarship available.

For more information contact josef@josefbeery.com. To register for the course, please contact gsqueen@comcast.net.

Please note that this is not a class focused specifically on letterpress printing.

The New City Arts Initiative is a collaborative non-profit fostering engagement with the arts in the greater Charlottesville area. The Haven is a day shelter for the homeless and those in need in downtown Charlottesville. Together, The Haven and New City Arts have turned the second floor of The Haven into two studio spaces in order to provide working space for artists and integrate creative programming into the resources available to Haven guests during the day.

Each studio space is a quarter of an approximately 400 square foot, open workspace room. Windows on every wall provide wonderful, natural light during the day. More details about the residency are available here.

Both resident artists will be required to develop a flexible arts program, focused on developing the artistic endeavors of Haven guests in the day shelter. Artists who demonstrate artistic excellence, an interest in studio production, and experience with community organizing are encouraged to apply. Artists are expected to spend a minimum of 4 hours a week with guests and at least 6 in the studio.

A full application should be emailed to Maureen Lovett — artsdirector@newcityarts.org — by midnight on June 8.

Since 2006 Michael Kempson, director of Cicada Press, and Tess Allas, curator of Black Prints, have invited emerging and established Aboriginal artists to explore printmaking as an artistic practice in the form of workshops and residencies. The resulting exhibition includes work by artists such as Gordon Hookey, Vernon Ah Kee, Reko Rennie and Laurel Nannup.

The title Black Prints is a word play on the Australian child’s summer obsession of collecting cicada carcasses. While ‘greengrocers’ are the most common species, many of them can be traded for just one of the rarely found, but highly prized ‘black prince’ cicada. Fittingly, summer 2013 marks the emergence of 17-year cicadas in Virginia.

The exhibit will remain on display through August 18.

[Image Credit: Brett Nannup, Self-Portrait, 2012, courtesy Cicada Press]

It is BRAVO’s mission to provide Charlottesville’s young professionals the chance to build community, make friends, and learn about opera at the same time. Opera enthusiasts (and the curious) between the ages of 25 and 45 are encouraged to check BRAVO out!

The salon will take place on Thursday, May 30 from 7:30-9:30pm at Live Arts on the fourth floor. This event is FREE and open to the public, but please RSVP by emailing bravo@ashlawnopera.org.

For over 33 years, the Ash Lawn Opera Festival has produced opera and other musical performances first at Ash Lawn-Highland, and now at the beautifully renovated Paramount Theater in downtown Charlottesville.

Come hear stories of hilarity and tragedy as people tell tales about their rivalries. Co-hosts Tom Clay and Jude Silveira will present this smorgasbord of local people from all walks of life telling true 6-8 minute stories.

For more information, please visit www.bigbluedoor.org.

August: Osage County was the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2008 Tony Award for Best Play, and this tragic, darkly comedic production will be directed by Fran Smith.

Live The Westons are a family like any other: its members have spent decades weaving elaborate fictions and keeping their distance. Then one day the family patriarch disappears and everyone is forced to come together again in the old house in Pawhuska, Oklahoma to face the truth: the only two things they all have in common are mutual love and an uncanny ability to destroy each other.

August: Osage County will run from May 17 through June 8 in the Gibson Theater. Tickets are $25 ($20 for students and seniors). Wednesday performances are Pay-What-You-Can, presented by Wells Fargo. Tickets may be purchased online at livearts.org or by calling the Live Arts Box Office at 434-977-4177 × 108.

A free preview will be offered on Thursday, May 16. For tickets to the free preview, stop by the Live Arts Box Office.