CHARLESTON —  Youth in Charleston and surrounding areas will soon have access to musical instruments and lessons from professional musicians. After more than a year of planning, the Clay Center will launch its brand new program, Clay Community Arts, this summer.

The program was created in 2006 with the mission to enhance the quality of life by providing community-based educational opportunities in the arts and sciences throughout the state. Over the next three years, the program's goals include providing quality music lessons and musical instruments to young people in Clay, Mason, Lincoln and Mingo counties; providing adult music education programming at the Clay Center with scholarships to reach underserved participants; and expanding programming to include additional West Virginia counties.

Lyle Clay made this program possible with his generous gift to the Clay Center in 2007. He requested that the programming supported by his gift focus on musical instruction and target children who may not have had the opportunity otherwise.

Last August the Clay Center hired Community Outreach Manager Kate McComas to facilitate the design and implementation of this new program. She brings to the position a background in the arts and arts program management from her experience as individual artist program coordinator for the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and more recently as the executive director of the MountainMade Foundation.

"It is so wonderful to have the resources and capabilities to help the children of this state," said McComas. "Music and fine arts education can add to a child's overall quality of life that will continue through adulthood. Studies show that children who receive music lessons perform better in other aspects of their education as a result."

Next month, three Clay Community Arts instructors, guitarist Ryan Kennedy, drummer Tim Courts and jazz pianist Bob Thompson will participate in an artist discussion. This event is part of the Clay Center's ongoing free Lunchtime Lecture series and will take place Wednesday, April 9 at 12:15 p.m. at the Clay Center.

This fall, Kennedy and Courts will provide music lessons to youth in Kanawha County at the East End Family Resource Center. For this particular program, Clay Community Arts has partnered with the West Virginia State University Extension program. Also in the fall, Bob Thompson will teach music theory classes as part of the adult education aspect of this new program.

Upcoming summer programming for Clay Community Arts includes the following:

o Harp player John Lozier and dulcimer player Bob Webb will teach a weeklong workshop for the Able Families Summer Camp program in Kermit, W.Va.
o Clay Community Arts will assist the Partnership of African American Churches with the music segment of their summer program at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Charleston.
o Jill Collier will coordinate and teach workshops in conjunction with local singer Elaine Purkey at the Big Ugly Community Center during a two-week artist residency. Collier is completing her Master's Degree in Music Leadership at the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama in London.

For more information about Clay Community Arts, visit www.theclaycenter.org. To learn more about the members of the Bob Thompson Unit, visit www.colortones.com.