There are works of art, and then there is the work art can do.
Visiting a museum or attending a play or concert are time-honored ways for arts patrons to exercise their love. While passive viewing can lift one’s spirits or instill a sense of wonder over human creativity, the arts have an active side too, and offer potential to do great good for individuals.
Nick Leopoulos, in his role as assistant director of the Thea Foundation, promotes this active side of art, using the foundation and its programs to help students not only enjoy the arts but to use them to improve the quality and level of their education.
“It is getting rid of the stigma that the arts solely belong as an extracurricular,” Leopoulos says.
Named in honor of Leopoulos’ late sister, the Thea Foundation offers a number of inclusive programs, as well as scholarships, to students K-12 in an effort to help them gain confidence, self worth and perspective through creative expression.
The Thea Foundation, Leopoulos says, tries to work with schools whenever possible to aid existing arts education programs while also coming up with arts-infused educational innovations of its own.
“We have to know who else is out there because there are so many amazing resources that are smaller than we are that are having an impact,” says Leopoulos, who has firsthand experience with how the arts can improve learning.
Leopoulos’ parents, Paul and Linda, began the Thea Foundation in 2001, shortly after the loss of their daughter in a Memorial Day auto accident at age 17. While the Thea Foundation headquarters are in North Little Rock, its fundraisers have until this year been held in Washington, D.C.
But in a departure, the inaugural Little Rock event, titled “Into the Blue,” takes place at the Clinton Presidential Center on May 13.
“It started in D.C. because we have some close family friends who live in D.C.” Nick Leopoulos says.
Those close friends include former President Bill Clinton, who has hosted the Thea Foundation events in Washington and who is a special guest at this year’s event.
“The President did his homework,” Leopoulos says. “Not just an overnight, throw-my-support-behind-you thing.”
“Into the Blue” will be presented by longtime Thea supporters Chip and Cindy Murphy, of Little Rock and the Murphy Oil Corporation.
“The Thea Foundation has tremendous positive impact on the young students it reaches and does so very cost efficiently,” Chip Murphy says. “It truly realizes great ‘bang for the buck’ in amazing ways. Arts-infused education has proven beyond doubt to be extremely effective.”
Leopoulos says many parties had expressed an interest in having a fundraising event in Little Rock and that the support appeared solid.
So “Into the Blue” — named partially for Thea’s favorite color, as well as the color in the foundation logo and the idea of college students heading off into the unknown — will be the foundation’s first fundraiser held in the city.
“We realized the community would be served in central Arkansas,” Leopoulos says.
Namesake
Nick Leopoulos is the youngest of three siblings. Older brother Thaddeus, 35, is an acoustical engineer and by Nick’s account was an accomplished student. That was not the case so much for Nick, 26, and Thea, who would now be 31.
“He was a very thoughtful and intensive kind of student and I don’t think Thea and I were that way,” Nick Leopoulos says of Thaddeus.
Leopoulos describes his sister as a middling to average student until her junior year, when she tested the artistic waters and found them rejuvenating.
Thea embraced the visual arts especially — dance and theater — as well as creative writing, and the experience awakened her overall desire for learning and academic challenge. By the end of her junior year Thea’s Cs and Ds had improved to As and Bs.
It may sound hokey, Leopoulos says, but “it was a literal transformation.”
Suddenly Thea was registering for advanced calculus and advanced placement biology and, after her sudden and tragic death in 2001, her parents learned she had earned an A in trigonometry.
“She wasn’t a stellar student but when she found the motivation and means to self identify confidence in the arts she was able to transform that confidence into her core courses,” Nick Leopoulos says.
The arts did not necessarily spark the same kind of academic epiphany in Nick, “but it opened up interests in me in other humanities.”
It helped that Nick had Thea — who “had a default to love and trust” — leading the way. More introverted than his sister, he benefited from having Thea as a sort of of social guardian angel.
He found it difficult to communicate or speak up in class, but he credits Thea, and through her the arts, with helping to bring him out of his shell.
“She made it a point wherever we went to include me in the conversation,” Leopoulos says.
Paul and Linda Leopoulos began the Thea Foundation in 2001 as a way to honor their daughter and, Nick says, probably to find a positive way to cope with their loss.
“It was a very brave and very powerful thing for them to make public,” Leopoulos says.
Nick credits his parents for the “drive to transport and not let such a negative thing define Thea and her experience.”
Joining the Team
Despite his passion for the arts and art education and his deep love and respect for his sister, Nick was not at first eager to join the Thea Foundation.
He understood why his parents felt the need to take such a step, but for him it was a process.
“I felt an independent need to find my own connection with the arts,” he says.
So Nick earned a B.F.A in photography and an M.A. in arts administration at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He spent time on the East Coast and also worked in administration at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and freelanced for local arts organizations, developing visual identities and programming ideas.
Gradually he gravitated toward the Thea Foundation, and accepted the assistant director post in 2012.
“It’s been a very cathartic and heartwarming experience,” Leopoulos says. “I didn’t really understand it at the moment. It took me some time and I’m glad I stuck with it.”
The Thea Foundation has awarded 270 scholarships totaling more than $2 million. The foundation does not insist scholarship winners study the arts in college, only that they are involved in the arts and pursuing a higher education.
“The scholarships do not dictate a specific degree program, such as music, dance, theater, etcetera,” Cindy Murphy says. “They are given to reward a student who has a personal interest and notable talent in the performing or visual arts, but is free to pursue an academic curriculum of his or her choice. Most amazing. Bravo, Thea Foundation.”
Other Thea programs include Arkansas A+ Schools, which works with teachers and schools to integrate the arts and education through innovative methods; Thea Paves the Way, an annual, outreach event centered on sidewalk chalk art; and Thea’s Art Closet, which has augmented scholastic arts budgets by donating more than $1.5 million in supplies to more than 400 Arkansas schools.
During his tenure with the Thea Foundation, Leopoulos has helped develop the Thea Arts Festival, an event since handed off to the Argenta Arts Foundation. He also helped create a quarterly, young professionals event called The Art Department — a series of receptions where up-and-coming artists can network and exhibit and sell their work.
The foundation’s newest program, Arts Reconstruction, is a partnership with existing arts organizations like the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra designed to provide new or build on existing arts experiences for students during and after their school day.
“We feel the status of the arts across the board does not give students those opportunities,” Leopoulos says. “We feel like we are holding up that banner.”
But Leopoulos stresses Thea has no pretensions about being the lone voice of authority when it comes to the value of arts education. The Thea Foundation exists as a bridge to the arts, he says, and sets out to augment, aid and enhance the efforts of arts educators around the state.
If there is a breakthrough in the life of a student, as happened with Thea herself, or if parents, through their kids, develop a greater appreciation for the arts, that’s fine Leopoulos says. But if a student simply becomes a little more well-rounded, has a few more positive life experiences or comes out of his shell a little bit, the way Nick once did, that’s fine too.
Either way, Thea would have been proud.
“It’s merely giving kids the opportunity to find who they are,” Leopoulos says.
Into the Blue: An Evening with Bill Clinton
in support of Thea Foundation programs
When: 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 13 | Where: Clinton Presidential Library
Presenters: Chip and Cindy Murphy | Co-chairs: Dennis and Gayla Jungmeyer
Tickets: $2,000 VIP, $1,000 general admission | Information: TheaFoundation.org