SPARK Arts Ignite Learning

09/29/2026

SPARK! Arts recently held a special arts experience with Missoula Children’s Theatre showcasing an incredible performance of Stellaluna starring bat, bird and owl puppets! All 500 second graders from our elementary schools were in attendance!

SPARK! Arts Experiences are curated to ensure that every child experiences all art forms in their K-8 career, and is aligned with developmental stages/age. Art experiences, build background knowledge and schema of an art form. Our goal is to have all of our experiences memorable and inspirational.

09/15/2026

Here’s a bit of a sneak peak into just one of our professional development days with over 48 district leaders within MCPS, including coordinators, directors and building administrators. As a way to develop some of their goals for the year, Karin Bartels led a collage workshop where these lovely folks got to engage in some of the art that we support in classrooms. It is proof that MCPS district leaders understand the value of the creative process to flourish in all spaces!

We are so proud of this partnership and the results of this workshop! 🍎

09/10/2026

So proud of this guy and our SPARK! Arts teaching artist! What an incredible honor and opportunity. We can’t wait to follow along! 📸

Wilderness to Wilderness

I am thrilled to announce a project that I've been scheming for years and received the Wilderness Inspiration Fellowship award from the Matthew Hansen Endowment to complete.

'Wilderness to Wilderness' is a photography project that aims to communicate the expansiveness and wildness of Montana by visually connecting all of Montana's Wilderness Areas via a series of high resolution images in which each Wilderness Area is visible from the next. The visual connections made between Wilderness Areas is intended to inspire curiosity, cultivate respect and encourage questions from the viewer. Through the creation of a set of images in which a visual line can be drawn from the first Wilderness to the last, the viewer will be transported across Montana’s wildest lands.
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The resulting images, referred to as 'headliner images', will be shown as a traveling exhibition and coffee table book in 2029 (tentative roll-out). The capture phase of this project will take place over the next several years and will cover all Designated Wilderness Areas and a few recommended Wildernesses and Wilderness Study Areas in Montana.

The project is about more than just pretty places, it is about the spiritual and mental journey of reconciling our disconnection from whence we came, the natural world. For me, that means trying to understand my own relationship to Wilderness and translating those raw experiences into imagery and words. The project is going to take many years to complete and in many ways, that's the point. To go slow. To learn. To remain open to unexpected lessons from the wild. And so we travel, wilderness to wilderness.

I have a dedicated website and blog for the project. Follow along here:

www.wildernesstowilderness.com

09/07/2026

HAPPY LABOR DAY! 🍎👮‍♀️👷🧑‍🎨

Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend!

09/03/2026

Our very talented Bailey Zook made custom ceramic pieces for our last artist retreat!

Just wanted to emphasize how each and every one of our SPARK! Arts Teaching Artists have wonderful passions of their own, and they get to bring those elements to their professional work. It’s so special to see what our team contributes within their own artistic outlet. 🪴☕️ Thank you Bailey for these amazing ceramic pieces you graciously put the time and effort into to share with the team! Go check her stuff out!

08/26/2026

Reminiscing on our SPARK! retreat last week up north with some pretty cool peeps, so in case you had fomo here’s what we were up to😏

Professional Development partners, Sean Lane and Melanie Rick from Focus 5 joined us on the trip which included our amazing Teaching Artists and SPARK! mentors, where we were able to foster a space to learn from each other, learn with each other, and collaborate on ideas where one shared goal stands at the forefront; contributing to the arts ecosystem for educators and our students. Thanks to everyone who joined us, your engagement in the effort means so much more than you know!

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08/19/2026

Recently, SPARK! was invited to run an Arts Integration session at the Northwest Montana Literacy Conference, hosted by the Kalispell Public School district.

In this session our director, Sienna, led a Readers’ Theater professional development with northwestern Montana educators who were in attendance. It’s an amazing experience to bring these lessons to districts beyond Missoula! 📚🎭

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08/12/2026

Teachers who are a part of the MCPS Transformational Learning Residency are getting some hands on Professional Development training from our SPARK! Arts leaders, there to provide some tools to bring to the classroom ahead of the upcoming school year. We love collaborating with educators in Missoula, and beyond! Thanks to Karin Bartels, who led some of these PD sessions, those who are apart of the residency got a taste of how to bring the arts into their lesson plans!

08/07/2026

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

From SPARK!, with ❤️