The Handbook is a collection of ideas and activities that represent the current work of the ArtsLiteracy Project. All of the included activities have been piloted in classrooms at Brown Summer High School and/or in urban schools during the school year.

Many of the teaching approaches and activities offered in The Handbook have multiple sources. Several were created or brought to the Project by past and current ArtsLit teachers, artists, staff, and Youth Leaders. Some were shared with ArtsLit by friends of the Project such as the Washington, D.C. based Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Mary Hartman from Shakespeare and Company, Jan Mandell from the St. Paul Public School District, Brazilian teacher Daniel Soares, Teaching Artist Magdalena Gomez, and Brown University students working with ArtsLit in summer and school-year classrooms. Some you will find echoed in books such as Jan Mandell’s Acting, Learning, and Change or Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Others have evolved from classroom to classroom or studio to studio over many years. We offer this free site with the same spirit and generosity of the artists, students, and teachers who have shared their work with us.

It is the belief of the ArtsLiteracy Project that literacy is more than an ability to do well on a standardized test; it is about finding the words to share our stories with the world and to listen and understand the stories the world has to share with us. We hope you will use The Handbook with the goal of offering youth the opportunity to express themselves through multiple mediums to this end.

Since it was first developed in 1998, The Handbook has always been a work-in-progress. Its development is ongoing and reflects the current work of the ArtsLiteracy Project at a given time.