Arts Education

DTE Executive Director Martha Bowers is an award winning arts educator (Brooklyn Arts Exchange BAXten Award 2002, NYC Education Chancellor Rudolph Crew's Community Caring Award 1999). Currently, she teaches Equal Exchange: Arts-Based Collaborations with Immigrant Youth at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She worked as a teaching artist for the Lincoln Center Institute from 1986-1997. She has designed and implemented arts education programs for both the Brooklyn Arts Exchange and Dancing in the Streets in numerous NYC public schools.

A six year recipient of the New York Foundation's Artist in the School Community grant, she has been an artist in residence at the Brooklyn International High School since 1993, designing arts programs that meet the needs of recently immigrated teens. A member of the planning team for the South Brooklyn Community High School in Red Hook, Brooklyn, she continues her work there with school staff developing arts and media curricula.

Dance/Theatre/Etcetera's arts education programs emphasize engagement, collaboration, critical thinking and reflection in conjunction with the building of skills within a variety of artistic disciplines. Employing an arsenal of techniques from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed to documentary filmmaking, youth are encouraged to challenge themselves and their peers to become active participants in their schools, their communities and in determining the direction of their own lives.