3/16/24
Theater Camp registration is now closed, and all families have been contacted with their offered places. Families that have not reached out to accept their student’s place will be moved to the waitlist. We are looking forward to seeing our campers in July!
Registration for the Homer Regional Farmer’s Market is now open! Check out the links above for details.
12/20/23
Access to Arts Cortland:
Homer Youth Orchestra sign-ups have opened! To join us for the January-June semester, click here to register
Center Summer Theater Camp registration is open! Camp runs the second and third weeks of July and this year includes participation in the Center’s summer musical production. Click here to register
Room to Grow! Cortland:
Winter/Spring workshop registration is coming soon!
2023 Annual Newsletter
Cortland Collective Impact Initiatives
2023 Year End Newsletter
Hello CCII project supporters,
A heartfelt “thank you!” to each and every one of you for making 2023 an unprecedented success for Cortland Collective Impact Initiatives and our projects. We wanted to share with you everything that your contributions, volunteer hours, participation, and support made possible.
Access to Arts Cortland project
This project focuses on increasing equitable access to arts experiences of all kinds, and building a culture of inclusivity in music and theater. Our activities for this project in 2023 included:
Center Summer Theater Camp
This year 64 students aged 8-18 attended the two week theater program at Center for the Arts of Homer. We expanded to create a fifth class of students, and added an outdoor classroom that students also used during lunch. We were able to expand the camp to include a “boot camp” in the second week with experts in makeup, set building, lights and sound, dance, and voice. In addition to the two week camp experience we added two other mini-camps, to accommodate all community members who wanted to join us for a theater experience. In the first mini-camp, we invited children ages 4-7 for a fun morning of theater games, music, and movement along with Neezen Toze Theater Company. The second session JM Murray foundation partnered with us to plan a morning out for their adult clients and we had a wonderful day of movement and fun, including putting on a performance. Underpinning the camp experience are three core principles: inclusivity, respect, and growth. Thanks to funding from Central New York Community Foundation (CNYCF) we were able to accept more campers this year, taking everyone on our waiting list for a total of 84 participants including our mini-camps. Every participant who requested a scholarship for our summer camp was able to receive one this year.
Homer Youth Orchestra
More than 140 youth ages 4-25 and their families signed up for youth orchestra over two sessions in 2023. Students met weekly at Cortland’s Rose Hall to learn how to play a variety of instruments, read notes, keep a beat, and work together to make music. Five adult volunteer teachers and eight youth assistants taught weekly music classes. The Youth Orchestra students performed in two recitals in summer and winter of 2023, and in addition advanced students participated in the Harvest Ramble and Homer for the Holidays concerts at the Center for the Arts of Homer. Thanks to the generous in-kind and cash donations of supporters, the program was able to provide for every student who needed an instrument to borrow. Currently 76% of our participants are borrowing an instrument to participate in the program. Lessons, instrument rental, and the orchestra program are all provided at no-cost to all our participating families.
Wassailers and Homer for the Holidays
In partnership with the Center for the Arts of Homer we continued our tradition of organizing a no-audition, low-pressure carolers group for the holiday season. Now in its 6th year, the Wassailers provide a fun and festive environment to learn new singing skills and enjoy harmonizing with a group. The Wassailers perform as part of the Homer for the Holidays event the 3rd Sunday of every December: a free sing-along community concert to bring joy around the holidays. This year an interfaith choir for peace was also organized for the concert. The youth orchestra provided prelude and interlude music, and three local schools provided choirs for the event.
Arts in the Community
We believe that the arts are for everyone, and as part of that commitment offer push-in classes for students in alternative education settings. We partnered with Cloud 9 Enrichment to offer more than 40 students a 10 week “Arts through the Ages” cross-curricular humanities course. At Truxton Academy all students in grades K-6 are receiving weekly music lessons and participated in a winter concert for the community. The Center for the Arts of Homer also provided free tickets to concerts that we were able to distribute to community members who would not be able to attend at full price.
Looking to 2024
The Access to Arts Cortland project is always looking to expand and create new programming to meet the needs of the community and welcome more people into arts spaces. We continue to plan a reentry arts therapy program, where community members coming back to Cortland after addiction rehabilitation would have access to music and arts therapy to support their recovery. We are also gauging interest in an all-abilities children’s choir focusing on adaptive music exploration. Long-term we are pursuing a state redevelopment grant in partnership with Seven Valleys Health Coalition, to have a physical space where we could offer free after school programs and enrichment classes for all ages. Regular sponsored classes would allow us to expand our partnerships with organizations like Boom Dance Complex and LudoSport Cortland to increase equitable access to arts activities of all kinds. We will also be working with the Center for the Arts of Homer to integrate our theater programs into the Center’s summer musical offering this year. We hope to expand our arts in the community programs to bring more music classes to alternative schools, and adult day centers. And we are always looking for community arts partners willing to discount or donate tickets and classes to distribute to community members who face barriers to accessing programs.
Room to Grow! Cortland
Cortland Community Learning Garden
We were thrilled to be on the organizing committee for the Learning Garden this year, and honored to act as fiscal sponsors of the project alongside Seven Valleys Health Coalition who received a Cortland Bright Ideas grant to help support the garden. The Cortland Community Learning Garden had a running start this spring thanks to a donation from the Bertini Family Foundation at CNYCF and a Seed Money matching grant, as well as thousands of pounds of soil from Bio365. In the Molina Healthcare “Food for All” garden more than 390 pounds of food were harvested by the garden manager and volunteers, and distributed across the community. The garden was kept well-supplied and the tools and equipment organized thanks to a grant from the Cortland Community Foundation. Individuals were welcome to pick from the garden anytime, and there were frequent visitors to the garden. Mulch from Lime Hollow and Windswept Tree Service kept the weeds down and pathways clean, and support from Main Street Farms and Dave’s Veggies kept us growing. Community partnerships helped us reach vulnerable community members who would otherwise be excluded from the community gardening experience. Through the Cortland Works summer intern program, the garden was able to hire a vulnerable youth to work in the garden all summer, giving them valuable work skills and experience. An ongoing partnership with Access to Independence is improving the design of the garden so that it will be accessible to those of all abilities. Students from SUNY Cortland as well as community volunteers helped prepare, plant, and maintain the garden. And sponsorship from the Cortland Breakfast Rotary Club and their district kept the garden running this year and will see it into 2024.
Community Workshop Series
In partnership with the Cortland Community Learning Garden, Molina Healthcare, and the American Heart Association, we coordinated community workshops on a variety of subjects. The “Kids Brunch Bunch” series were hands-on workshops for kids of all ages on the following topics: pollinators, vermicompost, wild edibles, and kid-friendly veggie cooking. The “Dessert Workshop Series” brought adults together on Saturday evenings to learn about: planting tomatoes, music and meditation in nature, herbs, local foraging, composting, preserving food, and creating your own hanging baskets. In every workshop food and resources from the garden were used to connect the community to the space. Workshops were well-attended and participants were enthusiastic. Twenty-eight children signed up for the Kids Brunch Bunch series, and 39 adults for the Dessert Workshop series. Thanks to our incredible workshop teachers, attendees learned from hands-on activities during the workshops and took materials home each week such as bee houses, potted tomatoes, and vermicomposting kits. With the colder weather, we partnered with the American Heart Association to provide a workshop indoors, whilst still using food from the garden. In October a workshop at the Grange building on making a sodium-free soup from frozen vegetables picked in the community garden had 21 attendees. All workshops were free to attend. The Kiwanis Club of Cortland as well as the Cortland Rotary Breakfast Club invited CCII to speak at their meetings about this project and our other endeavors. And the Lime Hollow Summer Concert series made a donation toward our programs.
Homer Farmer’s Market
In the summer of 2023 Room to Grow! Cortland resurrected the Homer Farmer’s Market by organizing a monthly market on the Phillips Free Library Green, coordinated with other library and village events. Support from the Homer Village made the market run smoothly and our vendors demonstrated to our community the great local producers we have in our community.
Looking to 2024
CCII will continue to facilitate community partnerships and funding for the Cortland Community Learning Garden in 2024, as well as advising on direction and management. We will also continue to organize and implement community workshops on public health priorities, including the Learning Garden summer workshop series. Beginning in January we will also offer winter workshops with our community partners to encourage a healthy lifestyle and increase access to foods and tools for healthy eating. We also hope to reinstate Room to Grow! Cortland’s first project: accessible raised garden beds delivered to the homes of community members in need. In partnership with Seven Valleys Health Coalition and Jamie Yaman we are looking to develop an indoor year-round regional farmer’s market in Homer.
Sponsorship and Volunteer Opportunities
All of CCII’s projects would not happen without the support of generous sponsors, grant awards, community partnerships, and grassroots volunteers and donations. In order to continue to fund our projects into 2024 we ask for our community’s continued support of these programs. Inquiries about donations to either project can be made by emailing AccessToArtsCortland@gmail.com and RoomToGrowCortland@gmail.com. We are a 501c3 and able to accept checks, cash donations, Venmo, and PayPal.
Particular sponsorship opportunities include:
Community Garden Children’s Playground – expanding the informal play area in the Learning Garden to create a space that engages children with nature and the garden
Community Garden Signage – funding professional signage for all areas of the garden including the informational signs in the display gardens
2024 Workshop Series Sponsor – sponsoring the materials and facilities for the coming year’s community education workshops
Spring and Winter Youth Orchestra Session Sponsors – funding the materials needed to run a session of orchestra including acquiring any additional student instruments and providing music and materials to students
Building Sponsorship – We continue to look for a permanent physical location that can host many of our activities, particularly as we expand programming, and welcome assistance in any capacity including rent sponsorship
Summer Theater Camp Sponsor – Last year 40% of our theater camp attendees received a scholarship to attend, and a 2024 sponsor would allow us to offer this same level of funding to this year’s attendees
There are also opportunities to fund individual orchestra and theater camp students, and to fund particular instrument sections in orchestra and theater specialties for camp.
In addition to funding, our incredible volunteers keep our programs going and growing. If you are interested in volunteering for any of our programs, please email us at AccessToArtsCortland@gmail.com or RoomToGrowCortland@gmail.com to be added to our volunteer opportunity email lists. You can also check out our website at cortlandcii.org or our project Facebook pages for regular updates.
As we think about the future for our programs, we look to establish partnerships that will allow the projects to become self-sustaining. If you or your organization are interested in taking on directorship of any of our current or future programs, please reach out to us at the emails above.
Thank you again for your continued support of our programs. We have accomplished so much because of you, and look forward to a 2024 that is just as successful!