Commonwealth Theatre Center Live Touring Production

Commonwealth Theatre Center (CTC) recently received a generous grant of $4,800 from the Community Foundation of Southern Indiana’s Community Impact Fund to support the presentation of two school-based performances of CTC’s professionally produced and acted Red Riding Hood at Fairmont Elementary School and S. Ellen Jones Elementary School in November.

Funds also supported a public performance for families at the Ogle Center’s Robinson Theatre at Indiana University Southeast. The live musical production engaged a total of approximately 880 children, teachers and parents in Floyd County!

The Foundation’s Community Impact Fund is the unrestricted fund we used to address the needs of our community. According to our Assessment of Community Needs and Priorities, we can improve the quality of life in our region and foster creativity in our youth in a number of ways including: making the arts more accessible to our community; targeting youth for attendance at performances and tying those experiences to active, hands on opportunities.

This grant to CIC is helping address a community need. CTC engaged students with take-home activities to share with their families, and provided participating school sites with a CTC-created teacher resource guide. At the schools, CTC sent students home with nearly 600 family activity pages and “ask me about the performance” stickers, as well as distributed resource guides and “thank you letter” instructions to all of the school’s teachers. As you can see from the picture below, many of those thank you letters found their way back to the Community Foundation!

We’re proud to serve as this community’s partner, resource and steward in philanthropy. In addition to helping individuals, families and businesses give back in meaningful ways, we’re using our own Community Impact Fund to address the needs in Clark and Floyd counties, improving our quality of life and building community connections.