Storytelling and the Folk Arts Spirit: The Roads That Lead Home
Monday, July 14 – Thursday, July 17, 2025, 9:00am-3:30pm
The Foundry Theater at Antioch College,
920 Corry St, Yellow Springs OH 45387
Free to all teachers and administrators (preK-12, any subject)
“Folk art is the soil where all great art is rooted.”
The songs, dances, stories and artworks we pass down not only keep ancestral knowledge alive – they provide context and foster understanding about where we belong today. Join extraordinary artists to explore the Miami Valley’s rich cultural heritage and discover ways to help students build their own empathy, identity and sense of belonging.
Explore guiding questions that will frame the year’s professional development series:
- What are folk arts?
- What kinds of experiences create our definitions of “home” and “belonging”?
- How can folk music, dance, and storytelling practices help us to communicate our beliefs about home and belonging?
- How can folk arts be used as tools for education and cultural exchange?
- How do we collect, remember, and pass on stories? Why?
- How do folk arts reflect shared human experiences and build community?
What You Can Expect During the Institute
Each July, Muse’s Summer Institute for Educators brings acclaimed creative minds from across the globe to the Miami Valley to spend four days exploring and co-creating with teachers. The institute is a place where teachers can tap into their capacities for creativity and artistry, collaborate with their peers, and discover how experiential learning through various artistic disciplines can serve a wide range of subject areas.
The week is carefully sequenced and scaffolded so that each day’s work builds on what comes before. For that reason, Muse strongly recommends that participants plan to attend all sessions.
Activities will be accessible, relevant and fun for teachers of all grade levels, subject areas and artistic proclivity.
Complimentary continental breakfast and catered lunch are provided every day.
Seat Hours & UD Credit Hours
There are two ways for participating teachers to earn seat or credit hours (and you can do both!):
- Earn 25 seat hours for attending the Summer Institute (four days).
- Earn three University of Dayton credit hours for attending the Summer Institute (four days) and participating in two evening meetings and developing and teaching a lesson in the fall.
Additional Discounts
The Summer Institute is free, but teachers from participating high schools and middle schools can earn an additional Muse discount! If a Muse teacher registers for and attends all four days of the institute, their school receives an additional $50 discount off the 2025-26 in-school performance total. This is in addition to the $100 participating schools may receive for scheduling three or more 2025-26 in-school performances by May 30, 2025. Maximum one $50 discount per school for Summer Institute attendance and one $100 discount per school for early scheduling of in-school performances.
Summer Institute 2025 Preview Workshop
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
4:00-6:00pm
126 N. Main St., Dayton, OH
Join fellow educators and teaching artists for a sneak peek at the fun in store this summer! Chris Westhoff and Beth Wright – both teaching artists and educators – lead this FREE hands-on, dynamic workshop for every teacher interested in Summer Institute 2025. No registration is required.
Pre-Institute Reception & Workshop
Thursday, July 13, 2025
2:00-4:00pm
Springfield Museum of Art
107 Cliff Park Road, Springfield, OH 45504
Institute participants are invited to meet this summer’s teaching artists and explore our chosen themes of “home” and “belonging” through a hands-on experience with the exhibition Aminah Robinson: Journeys Home, A Visual Memoir.
Museum educator Amy Korpieski will lead a highly engaging introductory workshop on Visible Thinking Strategies developed by Project Zero at Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to developing students’ thinking dispositions. It emphasizes thinking through art and the role of cultural forces.
Participants will earn two seat hours. Register for free when you sign up for the institute!
Support for Muse Machine’s Summer Institute for Educators is provided by
Martha Holden Jennings Foundation
Matt Moore & Janet Graul
The Fred & Alice Wallace Charitable Memorial Foundation
The Mary H. Kittredge Fund
Transformative Justice Initiative
Register For The InstituteSummer Institute 2025 Artist Bios
Born in north-central Appalachia, Omope Carter Daboiku (“Mama O”) is a storyteller, wordsmith and multimedia artist. Designated a master teaching artist in 1990 by the Ohio Arts Council, Mama O has performed across the US and on four continents, including a tour in Turkey for the U.S. Department of State and lectures in Germany on quilting as a cottage industry. Her art skills are as varied as the characters she voices: batik design, clay, heritage cuisine, needlecraft and weaving. An award-winning community producer for WYSO, she is published in several regional journals and anthologies; samples of her digital and oral storytelling are on YouTube. She began working with Muse Machine in 2020, conducting creative writing workshops about place, identity and culture that became staged readings.
An African American artist, educator and community activist from Dayton, Willis “Bing” Davis works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, clay and found object art. Davis’s art often explores the intersection of race, identity and history, as well as the power of community and collective action. Among his works, many have been featured in public and private collections alike from the United States, Europe and China to Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria. He has received numerous honors and awards throughout his career, including the Ohio Governor’s Award for the Arts, the Citizen Legion of Honor Award from the Presidents Club of Dayton, and the Ohio Art Educator of the Year Award. He founded the EbonNia Gallery in Dayton, Ohio.
Rick Good is an accomplished banjo player, guitarist, singer/songwriter, and performer of traditional music. His career has spanned five decades. A founding member of The Hotmud Family (1970-1983) and a partner with Sharon Leahy in Rhythm in Shoes (1987-2010), Rick’s work often took him into the Dayton Public Schools, where he has shared his music with three generations of Miami Valley students. Rick was named an Ohio Heritage Fellow in 2010, for his “… lasting positive impact on the excellence, vitality and public appreciation of the folk and traditional arts.”
Chris Westhoff is the Managing Director of Mad River Theater Works, the Development Coordinator of the Antioch School and the Director of the Foundry Theater on the campus of Antioch College. He has a liberal arts degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he focused on literature, documentary arts, media production and music performance. He has worked in museums as an art handler, in schools as an educator, with construction and carpentry crews, and in many theaters across the country both as a performer and manager.
Beth Wright is a teaching artist with the Muse Machine Preschool & Elementary Program, where she conducts artist residencies for students using movement, rhythm, choreography and improvisation. For nine seasons, she was a member of the Dayton favorite Rhythm in Shoes and enjoyed performing for audiences and teaching young dancers through senior citizens nationwide. Wright has also performed in collaboration with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Crosspulse, The Tap Factor, and Hammerstep. She has served as adjunct faculty at Sinclair Community College, Stivers School for the Arts, and Pittsburgh’s Civic Light Opera Academy. Wright teaches dance through several area dance studios and conducts dance-based programs at Dayton Metro Libraries in the summer.
Jazz calls us to engage with our national identity. It gives us expression to the beauty of democracy and of personal freedom and of choosing to embrace humanity of all types of people. It really is what American democracy is supposed to be.
Wynton Marsalis
