This edition of Amplifying the Arts highlights the RCOE partnership with the Palm
Springs Young Playwrights Festival (PSYPF). PSYPF promotes and encourages theatrical creative writing to all elementary, middle, and high school students within Riverside County. Each year it produces an annual festival that showcases selected works from students with staged readings using professional actors and directors.

This year, PSYPF received a record 39 submissions. Each play was reviewed by a special committee who selected the 2023 winners, who will receive a mentorship to enhance their playwriting skills, a staged reading public performance of their play, and a $500 scholarship to help further their career in the arts.

The winning playwrights will now work with this year’s mentor, playwright, screenwriter, and actor Phinneas Kiyomura, who will provide professional guidance to the student playwrights and coach them through the entire process of finalizing their plays. The three staged readings will be performed at the Fifth Annual Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival by seasoned professional actors.

The festival will take place at the Palm Springs Cultural Center on June 4, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. Casting is underway and the selected performers will be announced later this year when tickets will be also become available. The event will be free to the public, although reservations will be required through www.brownpapertickets.com.

The 2023 winning plays are:

• ART, written by Arlo Topete, age 18, from Valley View High School in Moreno Valley, California. ART is a story about one’s journey of finally being free. Through flashbacks, Art shares his life experiences and the people who shaped him, negatively or positively, on finally coming out as trans.
• MANAGE, written by George Sandoval, age 17, from Valley View High School in Moreno Valley, California. A doctor tries to help a patient manage his Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple distinct personalities) looking to find the epicenter of why it was developed. But is the doctor correct?
• LOVE’S LABOUR’S MOTHS!, written by Xuan-Anh Ly Biggs, age 18, from Riverside Polytechnic High School. A second-time winner, Xuan-Anh previously won in 2021 for her play, The Homeless Rich Woman and the Playwright. In this comedy, an actor’s love for theater shines through as he auditions and jumps through hurdles to secure the role of Moth in a production of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. Will it help if the actor is an actual Moth?

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 1

Innovative approaches for equitable and exciting opportunities in the visual and performing arts for students during school closures from Riverside County Arts leads.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 2

Meridy Volz's "Art with Heart" program at Indio Juvenile Hall was an instant success, and she was determined to continue teaching even as COVID-19 prevented her from entering the facility.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 3

The Our Town Cultural Arts Program brings the cultural arts into elementary school classrooms in the Murrieta Valley Unified School District, engaging students in the traditions and cultures of the citizens who make up our community and the students who sit in our classrooms.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 4

Lady Lead (LL) was founded five years ago by Louisa Higgins, Visual and Performing Arts, and Sarah Scheideman, Artist from Palm Springs Unified School District as a way for middle school girls of promise to interact with female art mentors while doing an arts and crafts project.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 5

Riverside Unified School District's performing arts students join in a partnership project with the community.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 6

In the spring of 2020 the Val Verde Unified School District initiated a Student Quarantine Art Contest, inspired by the Getty Challenge. Students were asked to select a piece of artwork from Google Arts and Culture and re-create it.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 7

The Moreno Valley Unified School District’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program was reinvented in 2015 as an investment for all students and has proven to be an exceptional program with its recent Golden Bell Award designation.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 8

In this month’s edition of Amplifying the Arts, we would like to celebrate the California School Board Association Golden Bell Award received by Murrieta Valley Unified School District’s VAPA program called Horizons Unlimited. 

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 9

Riverside County Office of Education, Visual and Performing Arts, is proud to partner with the McCallum Theatre Education to present its online series.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 10

Riverside County Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) is pleased to partner with Desert X to announce its student and family resources for the 2021 Exhibition.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 11

The Riverside County Office of Education is proud to support Mono County Office of Education (MCOE), which is one of the four collaborative counties in the Region 10 service region of the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA).

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 12

As we start a new school year, RCOE VAPA would like to share several noteworthy arts recognitions in Riverside County from the spring and summer, as well as a few new events just around the corner.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 13

Riverside County Office of Education Visual and Performing Arts partnered with Inlandia Institute to create the inaugural Riverside County Teen Poet Laureate event. 

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 14

In the Spring of 2021, Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator, and Peggy Burt, Arts
Consultant, began an in-depth study of the new Arts Framework, which was published in 2020.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 15

Riverside County Office of Education Visual and Performing Arts is pleased to partner with the Palm Springs Art Museum to promote their new online program.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 16

RCOE VAPA is partnering with CSSSA to get the word out about their Summer School for the Arts!

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 17

The past two years have seen our share of individual and collective trauma based on the effects of the worldwide pandemic. RCOE VAPA continually strives to make arts trainings available that are topical and relevant. One such offering is “Documenting Trauma Through Comics.”

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 18

Riverside County Office of Education is partnering with The Redlands Symphony to promote this year’s OrKIDstra music education program to you and your students; an original animated video of a performance of Sergei Prokofiev’s immortal Peter and the Wolf.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 19

Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 20

Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 21

The Arts at Riverside County Office of Education is very pleased to be able to partner with KQED in sharing some free and valuable resources for Riverside County teachers.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 22

Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator have just wrapped up their yearlong project on behalf of CCSESA.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 23

Arts as Life! is very low cost (only $23.00 per teacher/class) and open to all TK–12 teachers, administration, staff, and counselors.

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 24

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 26

New for 2023 is the RCOE Get Your Style On Fashion + Art Competition. This contest gave the opportunity to link the worlds of art and fashion through a creation while showing off one’s creativity and design prowess!

Amplifying the Arts, Volume 27

Louisa Higgins, Arts Administrator and Jeannine Flores, Los Angeles County Office of Education Arts & STEAM Coordinator undertook a yearlong project on behalf of the California County Superintendents. Their revised unit of the Creativity at the Core Module 12 is entitled Leadership in Arts Education.