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Mission/History
Who
W e
Are
We
at the Music and Arts Center for Humanity are very proud of
our heritage. Thirty
years ago Patricia Hart identified a need for music
education for visually impaired students based on her own
experience of gradually losing her sight.
Working with her counselor, she surveyed parents of
students with visual impairments and concluded there was a
tremendous demand for specialized music lessons. Ms. Hart
pursued local foundations and the University of Bridgeport
in order to provide space and funding for her endeavor…and
MACH was born.
During
the first year, with three volunteer instructors, fifteen
students participated in the newly created program.
A grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts
subsequently allowed the center to pay faculty members and
it moved from “a little project into a real school” as
Ms. Hart recalled.
Today MACH has expanded its services to include
instruction in a variety of visual and performing arts for
children and adults, particularly special needs students,
the economically disadvantaged, and the artistically gifted.
MACH is an accredited member of the National Guild of
Community Schools of the Arts and the winner of a 2005
Coming Up Taller award.
“During
the past quarter century, literally thousands of
school-based programs have demonstrated beyond question that
the arts can not only bring coherence to our fragmented
academic world, but through the arts, students’
performance in other academic disciplines can be enhanced as
well,” said Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie
Foundation of the Advancement of Teaching.
We offer the finest visual and performing arts programs in
order to serve the needs of the entire community. MACH
teaches drawing, sculpture, dance and music, but what we
deliver is personal achievement and accomplishment via the
arts.
Our
Mission
The
Music and Arts Center for Humanity is a non-profit community
school of the arts. We believe in the power of art to shape
and change our world. Creativity is a method of sharing and
communicating and the universal language of the arts allows
us to articulate both common and diverse human experiences.
It is through the arts that we learn tolerance and
understanding, and begin to take an active role in our
community. Our mission is to enrich the lives of children
and adults with special needs and others who may benefit
through active participation in the arts and educational
programs and services.
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