Creative Link strives to provide educators with accessible tools that build confidence, engage the creative process, and empower students to think in innovative and meaningful ways.

The Creative Link program provides:

  • 22 weeks of professional development and instructional support for teachers.
  • curriculum that teaches essential life skills to students.
  • a personalized programmatic experience for participating teachers based on need and interest.
  • project-based learning that unites core curriculum with an artistic mindset.
  • effective strategies for engaging, supporting, and empowering life skills classrooms and students.
  • creative teaching strategies for long-term sustainable student learning and growth.

Through incorporation of the Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM) and project-based learning, this program offers Lane County public schools an opportunity to engage their students in hands-on creative work while meeting core-curricula goals and criteria. No two Creative Link classrooms look quite the same. Lane Arts Council carefully selects and matches schools with qualified teaching artists skilled in a diversity of art forms and ready to collaborate.

The common framework for this program is the Studio Habits of Mind, which have been found to impact students learning, capacity, and awareness dramatically. The eight Studio Habits of Mind include: Observe, Develop, Envision, Express, Reflect, Stretch & Explore, Engage & Persist, and Understand the World.

Learn more about the Studio Habits of Mind and how we use this tool in the Creative Link program.

To discuss the possibilities for integrating the arts into your curriculum through the Creative Link program, contact Ben Minnis, Arts Education Program Coordinator at artsed@lanearts.org or 541-485-2278

Meet our current Creative Link Teaching Artists

Alex Ever is a multi-media artist who values and encourages self discovery and self expression through artistic processing. They have been involved with arts and children’s programing in the Pacific Northwest for a number of years. Alex believes that no matter the age, experiences, identities, and background, everyone can be an artist and engage in creative exploration. In the summer of 2021, Alex worked with students throughout the community on a natural dye/water conservation project that culminated in a series of public art installations at the Willamette River Festival. During the 2021-22 school year, Alex led a 25 week Creative Link collaboration with the students and staff of Twin Rivers Charter School.

Chauncey Mauney is a performing and devising artist specializing in theatre, music, and storytelling. His work with children and young adults has spanned two decades, four states (not including tours), and includes credits with Chicago Children’s Theatre and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Chauncey has a particular knack and affinity for working with people with disabilities, making access and inclusion cornerstones in his engagements. The insights gained through his time as a teaching artist have made it clear that learning and expression happen collaboratively, rather than through instruction. Chauncey is currently leading a 10-week Creative Link collaboration with the students and staff in the life skills classroom at Willamette High School.

Tom Miller is a visual artist who has taught students from diverse backgrounds since 1988. The power of storytelling is central to his work as a teacher and his personal work, which uses drawing, painting and sculpture to create seductive, narrative experiences for viewers. After teaching as a bilingual (Spanish) classroom teacher in Northern and Southern California, he worked as a teaching artist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, connecting the museum’s collection with inner-city students, and sharing his curriculum with other teachers at Evenings for Educators events. Having his own K-5 art class for eight years at the Buckley School allowed him to develop dozens of art projects that are rooted in 40,000 years of global art production. Tom is now helping students tell their own stories and build community with artist residencies through Lane Arts.

Lane Arts Council receives support from the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts.