Centennial School
This partnership is what spearheaded the Open Doors for the Arts team. The faculty at the school noticed a need for arts accessibility in their school’s population. The school serves students ages 6-21 with learning and behavioral disabilities. Children with these disabilities oftentimes struggle to connect with the arts and the community at large. The centennial school is also home to its own immersive learning center. With this technology and the need of the students, a partnership with Lehigh University’s Office of Creative Inquiry was ideal. This partner has helped us by providing the technology and the framework for the project. We help the school by creating arts and other area focused content for their students and the community as a whole. This relationship is symbiotic as we both provide value to each other in terms of team to team and on an individual basis. In order to strengthen this relationship it is important to use our content for its intended purpose. With more impact, we will be able to

LUAG
Since our project started this year, LUAG was very helpful with propelling the project forward being that they were the first space that we got to capture content for. Because several of us work at LUAG, we already had a good amount of knowledge about the types of art pieces LUAG has so it was easier for us to learn how to use the camera and the editing software as we were capturing footage and creating descriptions for the art pieces. This is a very helpful partnership as they aided us with providing key educational content for us and we in return have helped strengthen the accessibility aspect of LUAG through strengthening their virtual tours. A way for us to strengthen this relationship is creating a more in depth tour of the lower gallery at LUAG because as of now, our current tour only focuses on a handful of art pieces in the art gallery and only touches the surface of the art gallery’s expansive art collection. Continuously, that would also in turn deepen the knowledge and educational aspect that our tour would give students.

AAM
In contrast to our other galleries, the Allentown Art Museum is an actual museum that has big name artists. We have captured all three floors of the space in our tour, and we plan to add scripts to them as well. We have been working with a representative of the AAM to make manipulatives that the students can tactilely handle. Our hope is to practice making these ourselves with help from AAM so that we can be directly involved in this process. The Allentown Art Museum also wants to schedule workshops and tours with us, so we will hopefully have an ongoing partnership with them. The artists shown at the AAM are artists one would see in art history, so the Centennial School students can learn about more of the big name artists. Through the Allentown Art Museum’s implication of tactile elements such as manipulatives, we aim to enhance art education with the Centennial School students.

Bannana Factory
This partnership was started through a connection Y had with the Banana Factory. The Banana Factory provides art opportunities and exhibitions for members of the Bethlehem community. Over the summer we were able to scan one of their exhibits that features specialty dresses made by an independent artist. In addition, the team just recently revisited the Banana Factory to scan a new exhibit. This partnership benefits the project by providing a constant supply of art content for the team to use. This partnership benefits banana factory because the tours we create are also available for their use and strengthens their relationship with the university. This in turn, makes this partnership a symbiotic relationship. In order to strengthen this project it is important to continue to interact with the Banana factory. This could include the team working with some of the children from Banana Factory, Banana Factory staff teaching some lessons in the ILC at centennial school, or Banana Factory partnering with LUAG.

Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission
Similar to our project goal, the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission exists to promote art culture in the local community. Although this entity is focused on fine arts and our project differs by involving 360 technology and virtual means, our project also platforms fine arts in gallery and museum spaces. With this partnership formed in the near future, the Open Doors to the Arts project name can be grounded in the community and can be exposed to other community leaders interested in art and education. This partnership will allow for further networking and may even aid in distributing our tours and accompanying art guides. In addition, networking will allow for further collaborations in making tours and further feedback on how to best shape our content into professional educational resources. As we progress and continue scanning community spaces, it is best to work with other entities that have the same goal alignment. This can also help build a better relationship with the campus and the community outside campus.