i am so pleased to have joining us today two very special guests corey solomon who's the executive director of apple farm and denise heyman lawyer who is the board president for apple farms so welcome to new beginnings thank you thank you for having us so one of the reasons i wanted to have you both on the show is that i learned about apple farms about two years ago from denise she had been on a prior show and i was fascinated by all of her many interests and she said you know not that i've not busy enough but i'm also board president of this wonderful place that is focused on youth and arts and you should come down to see it so i got great footage which we're going to show later of some of the students performances i happened to come on a musical night but cory can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in apple farms and how you've been grown with them in to really transform the organization great you know so about nine years ago i was in a transition of my own in my life but prior to that i was a teacher and i worked in elementary school and taught many grade levels for several years and then i was involved in the gifted and talented program and during the summers for many years before that i worked in camps and i fell in love with overnight summer camp in maine and so i always loved to camp but then as a teacher i really saw the struggle of these children from all walks of life who just had a lot of pressure you know they were testing them and pushing them and school there's less and less time for anything that's related to really social emotional growth or learning and support and the last time we give these children to play and to talk to each other and to develop any of these social skills to me it's it's really hindering their lives and growing up and i've always seen camp as a really third arm to helping children become productive meaningful citizens and so i was working at camp in the summers and in south carolina and loving it and knew that that's really where i needed to be full time and my life was transitioning on a personal side and so i cast a wide net around looking for different places and i discovered apple farm through an ad and really fell in love from the moment i learned about it so it's a wonderful combination of all the things i really loved in my life which was you know the arts education youth and overnight summer camp at the time and i didn't realize at the time that apple farm was doing so much else in the schools and involved and all these different activities but i packed up all of my stuff and moved to new jersey and everyone said at the time you're moving from charleston south carolina to new jersey just naturally south jersey yeah i was like well it's called the garden state something positive there and there was this wonderful organization and so i started working as a co camp director and for our summer camp program and i've just fallen in love with that and the last almost two years ago was named the executive director and and it's just it's a magical combination of all of the things that are really important to me in the world but we're doing such incredible work and really bringing that peace to these children's lives that they so desperately needed and i'm sure we all value this and i think all of the all of the people who really know what's going on in the world value the arts and their role in these children's lives and they're so desperate for it and unfortunately school funding it's getting cut right more and more and and you hear about all of the problems in schools with children self confidence and violence and you know relationships with the other kids and socially and and we know that the answers  are the arts and these kids need programs related to that and so that's what we're doing and it's just wonderful if you want to truly truly is because the arts allow individuals to develop their self expression one of the things that i appreciate about apple farm is that you have performing arts so that's music and dance and theater and here you have the visual arts yes all of the different visual arts painting drawing ceramic sculpture and we have filmmaking and photography learned keeping alive black and white film photography and and then we also have creative writing and one of the things that's taken off recently in the past few years is our spoken word so can poetry so kind of combining that performance poetry with with the writing which is so powerful in sports of course healthy living in the martin outdoor activities swimming and all of those things come i notice and you know what i love about a farm i'm sure you you felt this and heard this but the kids say they get to be whoever they want to be at you know at camp it in our community and i think that's what we do best is bring together these really diverse communities of children and we make sure that they know that they get to be their best self and a lot of times they don't even know what that is yet and we let them discover that through the arts and then the arts are such a good vehicle for them to learn how to really express themselves and feel good about it but also of that the environment is extremely supportive if you ever go to a friday night concert whether they're good or they're bad everybody and everybody stands up and cheaters and they support each other in this wonderful nurturing environment the gives them an outlet for the things they want to express the arts can be competitive once you start getting to a more advanced level and i i just feel like they've got plenty of time for that and what we have to do is help them become so confident and tall that they can handle that really critical you know life out there when they get there and i want them to know that they they can be anything they want to be and they have to put their mind to it and work at it and work hard and and then they can weren't worry about competitiveness later you know but at apple farm it's all it's all about nurturing and so we don't do anything that's you have a notion about but you haven't fully had time to vet it and explore it or it is something that you didn't even know you had and you discover it based on doing something you've never done you know right you know that's the that's the beauty of camp that's the beauty of an arts camp you know write him we should tell the story one of our board members has a son who's mildly autistic he's on the spectrum from the very mild but he always had trouble in regular school and the first year that he came to camp his mom came to see him parents day and she was a little nervous how is it going to go she asked him you know how's it going and he said they like me really like me and he felt accepted he felt part of this organization instead of being on the outside he was brought  absolutely and now he's our full grown teenager and doing wonderful things in his school productions and we just saw him in the addams family and it was wonderful but i think i mean i think that is th the most important thing we're doing is really being purposeful about who we are going into our community and making sure that they offer a life they belong and so often they are kids in schools are feeling on the outside of things you know  it's i think more schools support our athletes more than they do so our artists and and so our kids say like i'm the weirdo at school but that apple farm the whole place is a bunch of them we're all together we don't feel so weird well they found their tribe they're right all right they found her tribe they feel at home and you know the people here get me yeah you know they get what i like they get what i love they understand you know we start finishing each other's sentences and we have an appreciation so that's great you know apple farm let's talk a little bit about the physical space you know where it's located how large it is what's the history so  e farm is about one hundred fifteen acres that we really use and fifty five fifty six years ago albert and clare apple were farmers but they're also musicians and they had five children and even back then rouser and felt like he needed to empower his children to really you know use the arts to take the world on and i think that same spirit we use today we're we're basically just creating all of the them to try to like rally like about the rules like are you sure you're supposed to go to the really that's a rule we would like but and it's great i mean one of the one year the kids rallied around that they wanted crunchy peanut butter or we we eliminated the diner nuggets from the menu because there's not chicken in those nuggets and we're like we have a better product so the kids were like no we need these done and i g they came up with a petition and all of the kids signed it they made signs they picketed the dining hall and we're like well we're still trying to buy you better right and that's the that's the spirit and so history wise you know they started this camp and they were very inclusive that was another theme of apple farm that they at back in that time people were including people from all backgrounds that's one nine hundred sixty that's right and so for you know for him to have you know he said some kids and pretty much was the same but you have these chicken coops and we still have our middle school boys living in this converted chicken coop but they don't seem to notice right the girls got an upgrade  but then over the years the camp grew and grew and they added more more disciplines and i think the camp before back in the sixty's and seventy's they were they were maybe doing more liberal things than we are now but those different time right grew the center grew an apple farm started really growing into this regional arts center expanding the things that are happening during the year and so we started we added a festival we added a concert series and then we started also reaching into the schools and doing more arts education programming so we just got bigger and bigger i mean south jersey has a lot of great organizations and one of our roles was really to bring the arts into that region as well  and so that was really great and then a few years ago i would say apple farm really took stock of where we were at obviously resources are limited in the recession was was hard on everyone and we realize that you know our concert series though it was very meaningful and even the in our annual music festival it was it was somewhat getting away from that arts education role with youth that we really started  and there's such a need for in south jersey the children in this region just they need a lot more support than really providing and there's also several other great theaters doing really great work in terms of concerts and presenting and so we've shifted our focus into more on some treated or dislike of yes into arts education and programming which has given us such an opportunity to really put all of our resources towards programming in the schools and partnering with them to help raise their arts education initiatives down there in the south so you know so we have two parts of the business there's the camp which is a summer camp and then to use the facility during the year we do things with girl scouts and other ladies which they're pretty remarkable those young girls i did once they had a little round table where bunch of us had to sit up on the stage when the girls ask questions and their questions were great and they were not easy questions they asked really thoughtful questions some of them were funny like i happen you know i'm that my role is board president i'm also the c e o of a company and then i run a horse farm right so what's the first question that one of the girls asked what do you like best horse or apple far from lake apple farm right and they said what how can you not love your horses more and i said because but apple farmer affecting four hundred kids every summer were affecting all the kids during the school it's a sampler program for children in the fall and in the spring to come after school and participate in all of the different arts disciplines and we have as they went our site people as well and so we work with some other big groups like girls rock clean water would they come to and use our facilities but off site where going into the schools and so one of the things we really love doing r r r r this residency program long term residency is we're taking professional artists and connecting and these teachers and we've done a lot of professional development for teachers who are not only art teacher as regular classroom teachers and helping them incorporate the arts into their everyday curriculum that's one which we need more of our what i'd like to do because we've been talking about the performance and i'd like to show that he what you know i saw when i was there and it was such a variety between the rock n roll band and the thing in the tar instrumental it was just phenomenal and the kids were great there is the you know everybody will see the opening with the kim song so if we could roll that tape by really like to show that now and my name is william jones and twelve years old and this is currently in my second yeah my favorite thing about apple farm is that concerts and well that was great the performances were great hearing from william and from ben in terms of their experiences at apple farm it just looked like a lot of fun when my family and i went down we had a great time we were able to tour  grounds and you have a number of buildings as you said you have the residential buildings but you have the ampitheater you have the art gallery art gallery and where we saw the performances which was the auditorium you know quite a bit there so really you're you've utilized all of that space yeah we we just had or i had went through the process of getting our insurance condoms we've got in a wonderful way we've got a wonderful facility that we're constantly trying to figure out how can we best utilize that during the year obviously during the summer we've got this season to program and then during the rest of the year there's so much opportunity for us to be able to connect you know children and artists and bring them together and i mean what i love and you capture this in the video so nicely from that music concert is that there's all of these different children and so you know we've got kids from seven to seventeen and even all of our other programs we're working with kids from all for all ages all backgrounds and for can through our scholarship program we're able to bring kids from all of these different inner cities and rural areas who would never have the opportunity to attend you know a significant artist overnight program and we do that very moment of there was a young boy whose application rub you mean i get three meals a day and i was like still told that story because it's just heart wrenching thing but in america there's kids that can't count on getting different levels we've got right it's who work camp is a great place to try new things and so we've got sixteen year old kids who have never once played the piano or tried to paint and we've got eight year olds who are you know been taking all that you know are just naturally i mean william in that video he's one of our new york scholars and so we've got a wonderful partnership with the victoria foundation and they help us bring you know twenty five to thirty full you know kids on full scholarship every summer from the new york area and i mean he's he's got an amazing voice and he never had least lessons and we were able to bring him and really hone that you know talent and it's just so powerful and this concert was there end of the summer kind of performance right and some of those kids go back and get involved in arts programs and were lighting that spark a little artists all around the world and even if they don't do it professionally in their careers at least we know that we're helping them value the arts as well and so that's going to help files worldly wise i e you know as i mentioned to you had attended something over the weekend and the power of imagination is really what the arts allow people to grow and you think about videogames that you know fully render a city or you know while that's interesting the ability to look at a blank canvas and create order to be in a dance studio and you know makes steps there's there's something powerful about that and we need to protect that for children especially but adults as well you know it's it's you've got to be able to create that that's what rejuvenate she was with plan if she will live and going and i just really really appreciate the work that you're doing and the way that you're doing it it's both and that's what denise was you know educating me about because bringing people from different backgrounds together letting them reside together get a glimpse of how people live work out the kinks in that and grow together let's break down those walls and i mean me and helps our you know discrimination we are stopping that by helping people have empathy for each other because  everybody runs to be connected to other people and i bought a house there because everybody wants to have fun yeah and to the point you're making earlier where people felt that because i like this particular brand of music or something i was considered weird and on the outside i found somebody who may not look at anything like me but appreciates the same things i do right and that totally breaks down barriers right absolutely right absolutely right so tell me because you know the show is new beginnings so i know that you've done a lot of things as you said you've put your focus on certain programming but what else are you looking to do in two thousand and sixteen and beyond well we just went through strategic planning so like well i think program why we've got a lot of exciting things we really like to expand the support we're providing for schools in south jersey you know they they don't have the resources they need for funding but also just you know best practices in the arts in creating these arts education programs and so words were certainly going to focus on that and reaching out to the school districts and their surrounding area you know camp will certainly continue to grow and we're looking to add some programs for that would gymnastics and calling there are you know things like that those are banned from the kids where this summer we're actually focusing on arts plus technology and incorporating technology into the different arts to try to stay current with how we wouldn't be using it for the social connection but the connection to all of the resources of the world you know connecting to museums around the world and creating those resources i still want them to unplug borton that's very they have to start talking to each other  expanding our onsite programs and we're also expanding into starting a touring educational this theater troupe and we're partnering with the eagle theater and human ten and so we will bill create an original show around problem solving a creating lives problems and creating them solving life's problems and looking at all the different challenges of youth and even families and and figuring out how to how to make good choices around people a year and we haven't had that in a couple years and we decided to what the mini version what's a better way of doing this festival that really touches on what we're trying to do now which is you know raise our re