An existing classroom at Ruch Outdoor Community School is slated to become a permanent art studio for kindergarten through fifth grade after Jacksonville nonprofit Sticks and Stones Studio received a $10,000 Oregon Arts Commission grant.
The award places a Southern Oregon school among projects funded through the commission’s Arts Learning program for the coming academic year. Fifteen organizations across Oregon will receive $10,000 each, for a statewide total of $150,000. The grants support arts instruction developed through partnerships between community organizations and schools.
At Ruch, the money will support the conversion of classroom space into a studio designed for ongoing use by students and educators. The project is intended to establish K–5 art instruction within the school’s continuing curriculum, so the space and its teaching approach can remain in use after Sticks and Stones Studio concludes its direct work on the grant-funded project.
That longer-term purpose gives the award a role beyond paying for a set of classes. The studio is planned around Teaching for Artistic Behavior, an approach that gives students choices about the ideas and methods they pursue while they learn to work as artists. The Arts Commission’s project description emphasizes building the capacity of both children and educators to use the studio independently.
Ruch Outdoor Community School is a K–8 school in the Medford School District, located on Upper Applegate Road near Jacksonville. Its setting and outdoor focus have already shaped the art experiences Sticks and Stones Studio provides there. The nonprofit, which works to expand arts access for children in rural and lower-income communities, has partnered with the school on activities that connect creative work with the natural environment.
Among those activities is Nature Art Explorations, a separate program that Sticks and Stones Studio describes as serving 72 students in grades one through five over six months. Its sessions bring together art concepts, materials found in nature, collaborative projects and opportunities for students to discuss their work. The organization has also offered after-school art clubs at Ruch for different elementary grade levels.
Those existing programs provide background for the new award, but the $10,000 grant has its own stated purpose: preparing a classroom for lasting K–5 studio instruction. Sticks and Stones Studio identifies earlier grants, community fundraising and donations as support for Nature Art Explorations. The Arts Commission’s September award should not be treated as funding for that earlier program.
The school already includes art among the activities available to students, and volunteers help support its art curriculum. The grant announcement describes a plan to bring K–5 programming into a more durable classroom setting. It does not establish that Ruch students currently receive no art instruction.
Sticks and Stones Studio says its work responds to the difficulty rural families can face in reaching arts programs and paying for them. Through its school partnership, the nonprofit has provided free opportunities during and after the school day. A studio housed on campus would put materials and space where children already attend classes, while giving teachers a setting they can continue to use.
The Ruch award also reflects the Arts Commission’s priorities for the statewide grant program. Arts Learning grants are intended to give K–12 students opportunities to learn through the arts, connect artists with educators and strengthen students’ skills and engagement. The commission gives funding priority to projects serving Title I schools and schools in rural or economically distressed parts of Oregon.
Funding for this round comes from Oregon’s general fund and a federal grant to the Arts Commission from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other recipients will use their awards for projects including visual art, dance, photography, music and design instruction in schools and youth programs around the state.
For Ruch families, several practical details have yet to be made public. The state announcement does not specify when the classroom conversion will begin, when students will first use the completed studio, which materials will be purchased or how many children will participate during its first year. It also does not describe how the school and nonprofit will divide responsibility for the studio once the grant-funded work is finished.
What the award does establish is a funded plan to give elementary students a dedicated place to make art at Ruch. The school and its Jacksonville partner now have $10,000 to turn a classroom into a studio intended to serve students beyond the initial grant year.