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Dalton Arts Project is always striving to take art into the community.  We do this through programs in local schools, by joining with other non-profit organizations and sharing the performing arts with underserved groups.  This would not be possible without the hundreds of volunteers that donate their time and the generosity of community patrons that know the impact that art can make on one’s life.

Dalton Arts Project has scholarships available to committed students of dance and/or art who have fallen on times of financial or other hardship.  These scholarships are made available through the generosity of our donors and as such, there is an application process.  For scholarship information, please call Dalton Arts Project at 706-529-2787 or click on Here to Contact Us via Email.

Ticket subsidy programs provide the opportunity for many to attend Nutcracker and other performances. Hundreds of underserved are invited guests to Nutcracker each year through the generous ticket subsidy program offered by Dalton Arts Project. Our thanks to Lisa Townsend who volunteers to coordinate this worthwhile program. Guests from the Martin Luther King Children's Choir, the Boys and Girls Club, the Senior Center, the Crisis Center, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, First Presbyterian Church, the Family Support Council, and the residents of the Georgia Sheriff's Youth Home have all enjoyed the performances in past years.

In June Dalton Arts Project sponsors an arts camp to benefit area girls who reside at Cherokee Estates, a girls' group home sponsored by the Georgia Sheriff's Association. The camp participants, ages 8 to 15 years, take part in a variety of performing and visual arts activities.

The theme for 2009 was “Climb” and encouraged the girls to work together to overcome obstacles in their lives.  The students received professional instruction in dance, art and musical theatre at the Dance Theatre of Dalton. “I was amazed by their abilities.  Many of them have a natural talent for dance,” said Jo Beth Thompson, a dance instructor with the Dance Theatre of Dalton.

Art instruction was provided as part of the camp experience as well by local artist Debbie Percy. Each day the girls worked on an art project that they were able to showcase at the end of the week for friends, board members and staff.  According to Director Nikita Jordan, this is something the residents look forward to each summer and is a great way for the residents to learn to work together and have fun at the same time.  It is a mutually beneficial relationship as many Dalton Dance Company members are able to help out during the camp.

This camp continues a tradition of collaboration between Cherokee Estates and Dalton Arts Project. Director Long added that in addition, area dancers hold an annual clothing drive to benefit the residents of Cherokee Estates.  A real feeling of friendship is fostered during this annual week long camp and it’s something that dancers from both groups look forward to each year.

Fine choral music is an integral part of Dalton Arts Project. Chorus Peregrinus, a volunteer choir of adults who enjoy studying classical, sacred, choral music, sang for the first time with performance support from Dalton Arts Project on April 15, 2007 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Athens. This “wandering choir”, as their name translates, began in 1993 in Dalton with singers from many professions who have been asked to perform their beautiful music in many venues, including many historic sacred spaces in the eastern United States and northern England. The group meets weekly to rehearse and includes 15 singers from all around the Chattanooga, TN/Dalton, GA area.  Their most recent performance was held over the summer at First Presbyterian Church in Dalton and included both harp and oboe solos.  Chorus Peregrinus will be performing their annual Christmas concert in Madison, Georgia, on December 20, 2009.

Dalton Arts Project has an ongoing relationship with the local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club.  Beginning in 2006 with year long jazz instruction, the program really grew in the summer of 2007, when then Florida State student Mallory Starling taught dance classes to children and youth in the summer care program.  This program was continued during the school year with the formation of the “Dance Squad” in the afterschool program; two groups that studied throughout the year with a dance instructor sponsored by Dalton Arts Project and were able to perform for their peers. During the summers of 2008 and 2009, University of Georgia student and Dalton native Mimi Ensley conducted two week camp sessions after which students also performed what they had learned about dance and movement.

Currently, Vince Gully, a guest artist from Atlanta is teaching hip-hop classes in the afterschool program in a program sponsored in part by the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia called “A Chance to Dance.”  He is teaching classes each week and will do so again in the Spring.  Mr. Vince was a guest teacher at the Boys and Girls Club last year and is a familiar face to many students there and liked by all.  Dalton Arts Project is proud to be exposing so many to dance, creativity and exercise in such a great program.

The 4 year old kindergarten classes at Friendship House and Whitfield Dalton Day Care Center have 30 minute Creative Movement classes each week for 6 weeks thanks to Dalton Arts Project. “Reaching out and giving back is what we are about,” says ArtReach coordinator Devon Brooks. Classes are taught to the Pre-K classes at Friendship House each fall.  This program started four years ago and has grown through the years to include more and more students.  Each Spring the same Creative Movement classes are offered at Whitfield Dalton Daycare for the Pre-K classes there.  Students look forward to interacting with each other, moving along with the music and using the parachute and other fun apparatus that the teachers may bring to enhance creative experiences.  This is just another way that Dalton Arts Project is taking art into the community.