The Turrell Fund is proud to highlight one of the 2024 Landon Award winners: Inclusive Arts Vermont!
What is Inclusive Arts Vermont?
Inclusive Arts Vermont (IAV), founded in 1986, is an arts organization that empowers children and families through creative outlets.
IAV promotes the arts to engage children, families, and adults with disabilities. IAV prioritizes programs that center around education, arts exhibitions, and capacity building for teachers, students, and partnering organizations.
Inclusive Arts Vermont’s Work
IAV’s Start With The Arts (SWTA) combines arts-based literacy activities with social and emotional learning (SEL) to instill a lifelong love of learning in children ages 0-5.
The program is free for home-based providers and small child care centers throughout Vermont, as SWTA Teaching Artists work alongside providers.
Teaching Artists adapt the curriculum based on the children’s needs and meet the providers where they are. They also cultivate relationships between children, families, and the child care providers.
SWTA also engages children who may experience learning challenges, with activities crafted around how to access information and express ideas.
How Inclusive Arts Vermont Promotes Arts & Literacy
IAV prioritizes arts-based literacy through focusing on what happens inside the classroom, as well as at home.
Through SWTA, children are introduced to books and visual arts activities that complement the stories. Teaching artists support providers throughout the lesson, while also holding professional development workshops.
Families are also encouraged to engage with their children’s learning. Parents are introduced to arts-based literacy activities to understand what their children are doing.
Parents also bring low-cost materials from home and receive books to carry out the same activities at home.
The Turrell Fund congratulates Inclusive Arts Vermont and supports its mission of promoting early literacy through the arts. Thank you for all you do!
