Princeton University Press Release
December 11th 2001

Princeton announces four programs to help meet New York City-area needs resulting from terrorist attacks of September 11.

Princeton, N.J. - Princeton University has committed a total of $1 million to four programs that it is creating to assist individuals, especially young people, most directly affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and to help support New York City’s renewal and recovery from those attacks. The four programs are designed to:

• Provide live arts and cultural experiences, along with complementary educational programs, in the spring of 2002 for up to 10,000 New York City-area schoolchildren at theaters, concert halls, art galleries and museums in New York City. (The total commitment to this program will be roughly $500,000.);
  
  
• Provide $250,000 in scholarship support for students at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which lost more than 100 students and alumni (firefighters and police officers) as a result of the September 11 attacks;
  
  
• Provide week-long programs next summer on the Princeton campus or at the Princeton-Blairstown (N.J.) Center for children who lost parents in the attacks of September 11; and
  
  
• Provide funds to support faculty and staff who are able to contribute special expertise to New York’s renewal, rebuilding and recovery, and to support graduate student dissertation research and undergraduate senior thesis research related to the attacks.

In announcing the programs, President Shirley M. Tilghman said: “Over the past three months, we have been encouraged by students, faculty, staff members, alumni and trustees to find ways in which Princeton University could help meet pressing needs resulting from the terrorist attacks of September 11. These conversations suggested several guidelines: First, given Princeton’s proximity to New York, we ought to focus on needs resulting from the attacks on the World Trade Center. Second, given Princeton’s mission, we ought to develop programs that involve teaching and research, and especially programs that help meet the needs of schoolchildren and students. Third, given the desire of so many members of the Princeton University community to help, we should draw as much as possible on their various talents and interests. And fourth, without trying to do more things than we can do well, we should try to identify and help to meet a range of needs rather than concentrate all of our resources in one single area. The result of these conversations is the four programs we are announcing today.”

Arts Alive! has three principal goals:

• To provide live arts and cultural experiences in New York for up to 10,000 New York City-area schoolchildren from schools most directly affected by the September 11 attacks, either because they were relocated or dislocated as a result of the attacks or because they are in communities that suffered an especially high concentration of lost lives in the attacks and rescue efforts.
  
  
• To help provide economic sustenance to arts and cultural organizations in New York through the program’s ticket purchases at a time when many such organizations are struggling financially.
  
  
• To provide opportunities for Princeton students to offer workshops and other educational programs to participating schoolchildren.

The University will conduct Arts Alive! program in partnership with HAI (Hospital Audiences, Inc.), a New York City not-for-profit organization that was founded in 1969 to provide access to the arts for isolated New Yorkers (including the elderly, individuals with disabilities and at-risk youth) and that recently has been working with the NYC Board of Education to identify ways to provide the City’s public school students with opportunities to attend live arts and cultural programs. HAI will identify the public schools to be approached (from elementary through high school), work with the schools to identify the children who will participate in the program, identify the most appropriate live arts experiences for the schoolchildren (including theater, dance, music, art galleries and museums), arrange for tickets and transportation, and work with Princeton students to plan workshops and other educational programs in the schools. HAI is constructing a web site for the program at www.hospitalaudiences.org/arts-alive.

Princeton student participation will be coordinated through the sophomore class of 2004 which has adopted Arts Alive! as a special class project, and the student Performing Arts Council, which represents a broad range of student performing groups at Princeton. The expectation is that Princeton students will participate in each of the arts and cultural experiences offered under this program and will develop educational programs to enhance the live arts experience for participating schoolchildren.