200 Applicants across the U.S. Competed for the Foundation’s 2009/2010 Academic Enrichment Grants: “On-Site/Insight” One of Only Three Projects Funded

Atlanta, GA. December 8, 2009.
Sarah J. McCarthey, President of the McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation, announced that an art project at Henry W. Grady & George Washington Carver High Schools has received its third year of funding. The project “On-Site/Insight” is one of three to receive an Academic Enrichment Grant out of 200 applications nationwide. The Foundation has awarded an Academic Enrichment Grant in the amount of $7000.00 again this year to the project for a total of $21,000.00.

The 2009/2010 funding of “On-Site/Insight” will support a series of collaborative events between Grady and Carver High Schools as part of the overall project. “This project is an excellent example of a groundbreaking effort that relates to students’ lives and increases teachers’ abilities to reflect on their own practices,” noted Professor McCarthey. “Collaborative projects like “On-Site/Insight” break down subject matter barriers and bring teachers and students together to develop meaningful cross-disciplinary projects.”

In the first two years of “On-Site/Insight,” Grady, Carver, and M. Agnes Jones Elementary School students visited the High Museum to view the permanent collection, learn about its history and how to communicate the significance of the collection to elementary school students. Students developed interdisciplinary curriculum to explore contemporary art through museum-based learning and serve as tour guides in the museum.

“The generous support of the McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation has taken us on many great adventures and produced permanent artifacts for multiple locations involving hundreds of students from the full range of cultural backgrounds,” noted Grady Fine Arts Department and Fine Arts Academy Director John Charles Brandhorst. “Unprecedented partnerships from the High Museum portion of “On-Site/Insight” have led to a new set of interactions that the Foundation is generously funding this academic year.”

According to Director Brandhorst, the 2009/2010 project will build on the High Museum experience and memorialize it on both the Grady and Carver campuses where students will collaboratively produce matching sculptures The Stonehenge-like sculptures or “cairns” will be identical in design and fabrication; the cairns will align with each other across the distance between the two schools. “Typically schools meet to compete making this type of collaboration between schools quite rare,” added Director Brandhorst. “One of the aims of this project is to remind school communities that we are after the same things; truth, teamwork, beauty, and participation.” Names of stakeholders including the McCarthy/Dressman Education Foundation will be sandblasted into the surface of the cairns.