1. Upon finishing the first year of her doctoral studies in
orchestral conducting at the University of Minnesota,
Elizabeth Prielozny Barnes decided to create student
productions of two great, standard musical works which
are favored learning pieces for conducting students:
Aaron Copland's 13-instrument version of Appalachian
Spring and Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat .....and
thought as long as she was going to do these pieces, why
not take advantage of other performing arts resources
available at this large university and try to engage the university's Dance Program to
choreograph both works and in so doing create complete productions .....and as long as she
was going to produce complete productions, why not see if she could engage the Music
Education program to create teaching materials for both works, and then find a way to make
both productions available to the local Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools......
And so was born u2u™, a multi-disciplinary, performing arts and education outreach program.
A unique and outstanding collaborative effort, u2u™ utilizes the tremendous wealth of
performing arts, education, administrative and operational resources available at a university,
the creative expertise of local public school district teachers and arts curriculum specialists,
and the financial support of outside sponsors, to creatively and frugally serve a demonstrated
community need. During its first two seasons u2u™ involved approximately 150 university
faculty, students, and staff, to serve approximately 5000 grade K-12 public school students,
faculty and staff at 20 local public schools.
In addition to producing a repertory of educational performance pieces, this project has
spawned new collaborations of all descriptions within and between all of the participating
organizations and their members, while serving as a model of collaborative programming that
frugally uses the wealth of already-existing artistic and educational resources at a public
university to enrich the local community.
The long-term benefits and goals of the project
• Using existing resources of a university’s various departments, programs, and personnel to
serve the local community with a repertoire of educational performance pieces
• Giving university performing arts students an early opportunity to serve as teachers, and
mentors in a public school setting, and in so doing, learning both the importance and the
joy of using their artistic, academic, and personal skills in community service
• Encouraging collaborative endeavors within a sometimes-fractured large university
community
• Serving an ever-expanding population of public school students and teachers
• Modeling collaborative behavior to artistic and educational institutions
• Spawning additional collaborative projects within the university and local community