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_ who we are
Break Arts was established in 2005 in response to a growing need for dialogue and exchange among artists and teachers world-wide. We organized to address the calamitous lack of arts in teaching and learning around the world. In a global culture of high stakes testing, Break Arts breaks away from the impulse to measure and test the human experience and instead supports creativity and awareness of the complexities of the human condition.
Break Arts is comprised of exceptional artists and educators who champion the imagination and creativity as essential forces in developing and sustaining democratic schools, non-traditional learning environments, and communities. BA met at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and began a series of conversations and collaborative projects to address diverse viewpoints and perspectives on the role of the arts in teaching and learning.
DIRECTORS
Co-founder & Director
Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein is a poet, writer, and arts educator. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Primavera, The Evansville Review, In Posse Review, La Petite Zine, Contrary Magazine, Konundrum Literary Engine, horse less review, among others. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award in Poetry (2002) and was a poetry fellow at the Vermont Studio Center (2006). Amanda works as a teaching artist and arts education consultant with nationally recognized arts organizations such as Urban Gateways: The Center for Arts Education, The Arts Council of Chataqua County, The Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP), and Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). She is co-editor of AIMPRINT, a collection of essays by Chicago artists and teachers on arts integrated teaching and learning. For over ten years she has led literary arts residencies in schools in over twenty-five schools in various cities and small towns around the country. Her essays on teaching writing appear in Teaching Artist Journal, Teachers & Writers, Teaching Tolerance, and Art in the Public Interest. Her research interests include curriculum theory, portraiture as social science, the imagination, and the role of the artist in schools and society. She frequently conducts professional development sessions for artists and educators interested in imaginative writing and arts education program development. Amanda travels around the world to connect with artists, educators, and children in the spirit of art-making and cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. In 2006, Amanda presented a paper on the significance of autobiography in arts and learning at the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education in Lisbon, Portugal. She holds a BA in English Literature from Kalamazoo College and a Masters degree in Arts in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Amanda currently lives in Chicago, IL.
Co-founder & Director
Rachel McIntire has been engaged in the study of art, education and culture for over ten years. These studies have been guided by questions that explore how the arts are used in providing narrative generating opportunities for individuals and groups. Before pursuing her Master’s Degree from Harvard’s School of Education, Rachel played a fundamental role in developing a cadre of art-based programs serving youth throughout the Bay Area, including the art program at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, The International Art Alliance, East Palo Alto Mural Art Project, and the International Mural Campesino, which was created to promote the use of visual representation as an agent for social change and youth leadership in the rural towns of eastern Honduras. Upon graduating, Rachel lived in Mexico City where she continued her research of the role of the arts in community development examining how the arts can promote transformative dialogues in public space. While in Mexico she worked with La Secretaria de Educacion Publica in Mexico City in the Department of International Relations developing public arts curricula that supports youth in transmigration between the US and Mexico for largest binational education program, PROBEM. Also in Mexico, Rachel collaborated with numerous arts groups and artists that serve marginalized youth. Since 2005 Rachel and partner Amanda Lichtenstein have worked to develop Break Arts. Rachel’s holds brings over ten years of experience non-profit management, program development and curriculum design and program assessment. This work has led to diverse projects in Honduras, New York and Northern California serving Catholic Social Services, Art Up, Pond: Ideas Art & Activism, Hope Inc, St. Francis of Assisi Boy’s Club, Zero One, Brooklyn Fireproof, and internationally, Un Mundo, Jacaranda Education and La Secreta.
BREAK ARTS' ARTIST EDUCATORS AND COLLABORATORS
Maura Clarke, Cambridge, MA - theater artist/writer
Tony Day, Houston, TX - painter
Maya Erdelyi, Cambridge, MA - new media artist
Noel Gomez, Los Angeles, CA - muralist/writer
Jungsuk Oh, Korea - computer arts/graphic design
John Colleton, San Francisco, CA - musician
Peter Pheap, San Francisco, CA - music technician/musician
Rainy Demerson, Brooklyn, NY - dancer
Nyasha Warren, Panama - artist/scientist
Lauren Lauter, Chicago, IL - painter
Radhika Rao, Cambridge, MA
Jamie Topper - musician, sculptor
Marisa Jahn, New York, NY - new media
Caleb Duarte, Chicago, IL - sculpture & painting
Jessica Pierce, Oakland, CA - poet
Leah Sobsey, Chapel Hill, NC - photographer/arts educator
ADVISORS
Beth Sondel, Ed.M Harvard Graduate School of Education
Educator
Dan Molyneux, MA Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley
Professor of Arabic, Ceramicist
Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Ed.M Stanford
Writer and Arts Educator
Steve Seidel, Phd. Harvard University
Director, Arts and Education Program and Project Zero
Marisa Jahn, MA candidate MIT
Co-Director, Pond: Art, Activism and Ideas
Les Dewitt, MA UCLA
Enterpreneur and Activist, Menlo Park, CA
Cynthia Weiss, Artist and Educator
Program Manager for Arts Integration Metorship Project
Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Chicago, IL
Ken Hutz, JD UC Davis
Executive Director, Un Mundo, Honduras
Joshua Siegal, MFA Interdisciplinary Arts & Media
Multimedia Artist, Musician, Writer, Chicago, IL
David Schein, Executive Director of the Arts Council of Chautauqua
Founder of the Awassa Aids Education Circus, Jamestown, NY
IMAGINEERS
Clif Judy, Founder, Yard of the Week
Entrepreneur, SC
Robert Mauksch, Gestalt Psychotherapist
New York City, NY
Nina Joy Lichtenstein, Massage Therapist
Mother & Arts Activist, Chicago, IL
Radhika Rao, Arts Activist, Doctoral Candidate
Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA
Amon Daran Milner, Doctoral Candidate, Research Assistant
Lifelong Kindergarten MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA
Lucia Villars, Architect
Mexico City, Mexico
Annie Peligrini, Spanish Teacher
Oakland, CA
