We have an exceptional offering of artists for residencies in PA and WV schools. The Rural Arts Collaborative has some exceptional artists lined up for this school year!
What professionals are saying
Sam Turich, Project Coordinator for the Rural Arts Collaborative​
It's so important to bring robust arts-in-education projects to rural students. As one recent U.S. President said: "The arts are what makes life worth living. You've got food, you've got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect - make you love, are communicated through the arts. They aren't extras."
Sam Turich is currently a faculty lecturer in the Department of Theater Arts at University of Pittsburgh, where he has taught off and on, part time and full time, since 2008. He has also taught at New York Film Academy, Point Park University and Carnegie Mellon University. Sam is a graduate of Columbia University and the British American Drama Academy and holds an MFA from Chatham University. He’s the Head of Education for Bricolage Production Company.
A writer, director, actor, and teaching artist, Sam creates original plays, films and immersive works including Daylighting the Stream on Governors Island in New York City, and large-scale immersive with Bricolage: STRATA, OjO and DODO. His theatre directing credits include the world premieres of Gab Cody’s Inside Passage and Fat Beckett (Quantum Theatre), Yinz’r Scrooged (Bricolage), and The Colonizers (City Theatre). He wrote and directed the short film “Mombies” and the feature Progression and directed live action sequences for the Emmy Award-winning PBS Kids series “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood.” Acting credits include film and network television, including Law & Order and the role of Bruce Ismay in Unsinkable: Titanic Untold, and work at theaters in New York and Pittsburgh. He was named Performer of the Year by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2023.
Danielle McCracken - President of Oglebay Institute
“Once they’re engaged in the classroom with the arts, they realize it’s such an important learning tool. It’s beyond the final product. It’s about the process. It’s about challenges and connections and thinking creatively to solve problems which I think is really important to all of us, but certainly to kids to be creative problem solvers and to be able to communicate and collaborate. And really, that is at the heart of this Rural Arts® Collaborative program.”
“The RAC program has allowed Oglebay Institute to showcase the amazing artistic talent that lives in the Ohio Valley. We have had the opportunity to build relationships with sc​hools and artists to produce exceptional results that will have an impact on students for years to come.”
Margaret McKowen - Director of Contemporary American Theatre Festival (CATF) - Shepherd University, WV.
I am honored to be a part of the Rural Arts Collaborative. I deeply connect to their purpose of bringing educational arts programming into rural communities - communities that have often never had or have lost this learning opportunity. I believe the arts are the most important way for us to teach empathy and compassion for each other - the best way to make a better world. Thank you RAC for helping us make a better world.