The Arlington Tomorrow Foundation board of directors awarded two grants during their June board meeting, including $149,500 to the Arlington Museum of Art’s current Legends of Disney Exhibit and a $12,800 grant to support The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation’s Hope Squad Suicide Prevention Education/Training Program which will provide suicide-prevention programming to sixteen AISD schools. Here are highlights on these projects:
Arlington Museum of Art’s The Legends of Disney Exhibit | $149,500 Grant
The Arlington Museum of Art is featuring a blockbuster “Disney Art from Private Collections” exhibition now through September 4, 2022, which features hundreds of works from three Disney animation artists in Legends of Disney.
The Legends of Disney exhibit includes transformative galleries with an interactive set, sweeping vistas of animation backgrounds and interactive 3-dimensional aspects of the animation of Disney. The exhibition is a partnership between former Disney animator Andreas Deja, whose personal collection of sketches is the primary source of material for the exhibit.
The extensive private collection of Deja includes decades of work by three of Disney’s most talented and prolific animators: Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Deja himself, who oversaw the creative development of characters including the villainous Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, Jafar in Aladdin, and Scar in The Lion King.
Only a few cities in the world have hosted a Disney Animation exhibit at this level. Disney Art from Private Collections features almost 250 original animation sketches, character studies, storyboards, and concept drawings from Disney animated films including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Beauty and the Beast, The Princess and the Frog, The Lion King, Alice in Wonderland, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Bambi, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Aladdin, and more.
The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation Hope Squad Suicide Prevention Program | $12,800
The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation (The JEHF) has a mission to eradicate suicide by funding depression research, creating awareness through education, erasing stigma, and providing hope to those who are struggling in silence.
Hope Squad is a school-based peer support program that empowers students to take action to prevent suicide through a partnership with their local mental health agency. Since 2014, The JEHF has been supporting suicide prevention training and education to children, teens, and adults in Tarrant County and other outlying and underserved areas. This ground-breaking program is changing the culture of help-seeking within our schools.
Funding from the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation will provide Hope Squad program suicide prevention training support and supplies for the 16 Arlington schools utilizing the program in the Fall of 2022. The duration of the project is one academic school year and is an invaluable curriculum, literally helping to save lives. For more information visit https://jordanharrisfoundation.org/hope-squad.
Thank you to the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation for this article.