The Muse Project - Summer 2008 News

Dear Friends of the Project,

During the past few months, The Muse Project has made great progress!

In March of this year, the IRS gave us verbal confirmation of our 501C3 status. Our "paper" was to arrive shortly. Because of this long awaited and wonderful news, we began applying for grants.

By July, we had still not received our formal paper confirming our non-profit status. After a bit of detective work, we discovered that our EIN number had not been transferred from our old name, The Lynda Roth Project for Music and the Arts in Education, to The Muse Project. The ensuing confusion has caused an ongoing delay in receiving our formal confirmation. At the same time, we learned we had received our first grant from The Galinson Family Foundation, San Diego, CA. While we were ecstatic about the news, we were not able to be the direct recipient of the grant.

Hoping to resolve this problem, I contacted Bree Burgess Rosen, founder and vice-president of the board of No Square Theatre, Laguna Beach's premier community theater group (www.nosquare.org). Bree lost no time gathering a quorum of NST board members. The board voted unanimously that No Square Theatre serves as The Muse Project's tax "umbrella" for the Galinson Family grant, as well as any other applications we submit. We are thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to work under the auspices of NST. As we are both music and arts organizations, it's a great match.

Now, with the Galinson Family Foundation grant, we will be able to record the music to The Constitution of the United States, contract the staff of the Penn Literacy Network to develop lessons plans, and duplicate CD's. I'd like to personally thank Brenda Stouffer, TMP director and Jody Hoy, supporter, for their great work on preparing the Galinson grant application.

In June, PLN finalized and published three teacher guide books containing lesson plans for our first three recordings, The Declaration of Independence, You Will Go (The Indian Removal Act of 1830), and the Chief Seattle speech to the President. Developed by staff members, these lesson plans serve middle and high school social studies and English classes. It is extraordinary work.

The guide books will be marketed and sold, along with our CD's at their workshop, PLN/MUSE. This new seminar is a strong addition to PLN's course offering through the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. The CD's and accompanying guide books are also available through TMP. For those of you locally who are interested in these materials, feel free to contact me.

Finally, TMP hired UCI graduate student, Alison O'Daniel, to film portions of classroom work and edit our first video, About Us. It is posted on our website, Home Page. In addition to expressing our gratitude to Alison for her great work, TMP would also like to acknowledge Lisa Richter, donor and avid project supporter, who videotaped our salons, choir rehearsals and classroom work in the Philadelphia area. My deepest thanks to both of you.

Finally, we hope to hold another salon this fall. I'll keep you posted.

Once again, thanks to all of you for your ongoing support.

As ever,

Lynda Roth