VALA: Visual Arts and Language Arts


VALA creates programs that challenge children, teachers, and artists. We bring students and teachers into intimate contact with the world of the visual and performing arts and, in each case, creative writing.

We hire a wide range of artists from all cultural backgrounds, including musicians, shadow play puppeteers, theater arts experts, ceramics specialists, sculptors, painters, a bookmaker, a jazz poet, and poets.

The diversity of our guest artists contributes significantly to our programs since the student population of the East Bay is so varied.
5th graders drawing vessels with charcoal, writing about secrets
hidden inside them, spilling out as poems. Workshop with painter
Amy Trachtenberg, Lincoln School., Spring 2002.
Charcoal drawing of vessel by Lincoln School student, Spring 2002.
 We encourage projects that involve the children with each other and provide them with a key to understanding other people through the arts. We believe that making art, looking at art, and listening to art are essential to understanding other people, their cultures, and ways of perceiving the world.

A primary way children get exposed to different cultures in our programs is by interacting with artists and taking field trips to arts and cultural sites throughout the Bay Area.
VALA's objective is to expose public elementary school children from diverse backgrounds to the arts and writings of differing cultures, not only so that they can learn about diversity and art, but so that they can come away feeling a sense of pride and self-respect.

We not only encourage children to write by including writing within the art-making process, but also examine cultures in which the written sign is regarded as a sacred art form (Chinese calligraphy, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan and Aztec glyphs) and artistic images constitute a written language.
Charcoal drawing of vessel by Lincoln School student, Spring 2002..
5th graders at Lincoln School draw vessels from different parts of
the world brought in by painter Amy Trachtenberg, Spring 2002.
 The act of writing is fraught with difficulty and resistance. By bringing play, enjoyment, and challenging new knowledge into the process, children become engaged and overcome formulaic and cliched ways of putting words to paper. Working directly with serious writers, they learn about possibilities for writing openly, honestly and perceptively.

Children discover new paths to language arts. Writing becomes a form of drawing, encouraging conceptual learning. Integrating writing into art projects impacts other areas of study such as history, science, and all forms of language use.
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