About Emily’s Fund
by Karen List
The Emily List Fund for Performing Arts Therapy has been established by Emily’s family to honor her memory as an actor, a dancer, a reviewer and a lover of the performing arts. The Fund will be used to support theater, dance and music projects aimed at including those who are disadvantaged and/or under-represented in the hope of making their lives better and brighter through the performing arts.
Emily was doing this sort of work in England before a recurrence of cancer forced her to come home in June 2010. She was using theater to reach disadvantaged students who were not functioning well in their school environment. She engaged them through playing theater games and helping them to write their own plays. When they decided to perform “Hansel and Gretel” at their school and did not like the script, Emily converted it to a rap:
Once upon a time: Once upon a time
A long time ago: A long time ago
There were two kids: There were two kids
Who you should get to know: Who you should get to know.
The students loved it, but Emily had to return home before she could see the performance. Now we want to help other people who are as creative and committed as Emily was in using the performing arts to engage others.
These grants of up to $1,000 could help fund:
instruments or equipment for a music therapist working in a hospital;
scholarships for young people who can’t afford to attend summer theater camp;
travel expenses for a special young people’s chorus or theater group;
space for a dancer working with disabled children or the elderly;
payment for an instructor teaching movement to cancer patients;
tickets for groups who otherwise could not attend a community theater performance.
These are just a few ideas. Please look at the list of previous grant recipients for others. The application process is easy. We intend to focus many of the grants in the Pioneer Valley.
The fund has been established with the many donations given in Emily’s memory and will be replenished with new donations each year. Our intent is to award at least five grants annually, with recipients chosen by Emily’s parents, Jay and Karen List, and her sister, Madeleine.
Grant recipients will be asked to acknowledge the help of Emily’s Fund if there is a program and, after the fact, to provide a brief description of the event along with a photo or two for the Grant Recipients section of the website. Jay, Karen and Madeleine hope to be present at the events funded.
In this way and with your gifts, we hope to create a legacy for our Emily that will change the world one theater piece, one dance, one song at a time.
Emily would love that.