Ovation Announces Its 1st Annual “Fall Into Art” Celebration in Honor of Arts & Humanities Month

Ovation Steps Up Its Support of Arts Education Through Partnerships with The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and Cable in the Classroom

LOS ANGELES – October 5, 2010:  In celebration of Arts & Humanities Month this October, Ovation is launching its 1st Annual “Fall Into Art” Celebration.  Throughout the month, the only television channel dedicated to art and contemporary culture will be supporting arts education initiatives, as well as programs and sponsorships that encourage participation in the arts.  Supporting “Fall into Art” are Ovation’s partners at The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Cable in the Classroom and KCRW.org.

Arts Education
Ovation has always been an enthusiastic supporter of arts education and the next generation of artists, but this October the network is stepping up that support starting with its own online Arts Education Toolkit.  Launched last spring, the Ovation Arts Education Toolkit now includes additional lesson plans, materials and video.  New to the site, which can be found at www.ovationtv.com/educators, are units focusing on jazz musician and composer Count Basie; Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town” and how one drama teacher fought seemingly insurmountable obstacles to put on the first theater production at her high school in 20 years; and a study of mainstream African-American improvisational visual art and how elevating great Southern African-American talents, such as Thornton Dial, is causing noted members of the art world to reexamine its own prejudices. Ovation is also implementing social networking tools for the Arts Ed Toolkit site, allowing teachers to share their ideas and best practices with each other and to give feedback on the lesson plans provided.

Ovation has also entered into an agreement with The J. Paul Getty Museum to include educational resources from the Getty on the Ovation Art Education Toolkit site. The J. Paul Getty Museum provides over one hundred standards-based lessons to K-12 teachers for use in the classroom.  Teachers can discover free lessons and images, ranging from the world of ancient Greece and Rome to contemporary photographs.  In addition to meeting standards in the visual arts, select lessons address history, language arts and performing arts standards.  A link to the Getty educational resources is now available at www.OvationTV.com/educators.

In addition, Ovation is underwriting the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers’ ART WRITE NOW, a traveling, five-city gallery tour featuring 50 pieces of art from the winners of the 2010 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.  The exhibit is a rare opportunity to experience artistic and literary work produced by emerging artists in classrooms nationwide.  These works represent the personal visions and voices of America’s youth and expose viewers to the diverse interests and issues that inform Award-winning works.

Participation in the Arts
This fall, Glow, a free, dusk-to-dawn biannual event featuring the work of international, national and local artists, returned to the Santa Monica beach drawing thousands of visitors.  Glow projects invite active audience engagement and exploration.  This year, Santa Monica-based public radio station KCRW and music director and “Morning Becomes Eclectic” host Jason Bentley curated a Glow soundscape, featuring music and  commentary from the Glow artists themselves about their creations and works.  Ovation is the sponsor of the Glow podcasts available now at www.kcrw.org/events/glow-santa-monica-2010.

At www.ovationtv.com/fallintoart, Ovation is blogging about arts-related events across the country to give consumers a chance to support the arts in their own communities.  Throughout the month, artists and curators are contributing video blogs about how they “fell into art” and are sending in their ideas on how to incorporate creative activities into everyday life.