Teaching Residencies, Teacher Training
& Artist Mentorships

Dianne Legro is a master teaching artist who has worked in diverse settings throughout the country to train teachers to use their art form as a vehicle for educative and cultural inquiry. As a singer, performer, and longtime professional advocate for the arts, she enjoys a whole life in music and arts education.

Who are Teaching Residencies for?
Colleges, Universities, & Public School Systems
School systems residencies are custom designed to support curriculum objectives and creatively fulfill the new arts standards. Programs are also available for teacher training, stress management and professional renewal.

Communities, Cities, and Towns
Residencies for communities are custom designed to bring the arts to life in ways which heal and enliven communities and spark their development and community spirit.

Arts Organizations & Cultural Institutions
Residencies are designed to enhance and vivify established programs, and can be designed to bring a whole new spark of dynamic creativity through innovative mind/body/spirit arts infusion projects.

What to expect
As a seasoned performer and educator, Dianne knows the equation of the performing teaching artist from both sides, and brings a joy and passion to her expertise in offering high quality training not just to artists, but to teachers, administrators, community leaders, and parents as well.

Informances and performances by Dianne are complemented by friendly, in-depth workshops and master classes on a variety of academic themes including audition and performance skills, language arts, social studies, literature, nature and the environment. She sings in 12 languages, tells multicultural stories, and uses humorous anecdotes to teach and speak to the human condition.

An informance is an INFORMal perforMANCE. The performer is personal with the audience, answers questions about herself, makes the music interactive and accessible to all. Often the event takes place in a non-traditional performing space (e.g. a bank lobby, boardroom, factory floor) that surprises people and introduces them to a new art form.

No matter the setting, every experience is designed to be interactive, high-spirited and to spark thinking, learning and personal growth.

Teaching Residency topics may include:

  • Integrating the Arts into Core Curriculum
  • Developing a Thematic Residency
  • Successful Teacher Artist Collaborations
  • Lesson Planning for Teachers and Artists
  • Assessment: a Comprehensive Instrument to Measure Residency Effectiveness
  • Confidence, and Performing Personally and Authentically in Outreach Settings
  • The Role of the Arts in Healing and Lifelong Renewal


Teaching Artist background
Dianne’s performing and mentoring work has brought her from inner city classrooms, to classes held in a former southern tobacco shed, to international training programs in prestigious universities. Dianne was Chair of the Vocal Department at The Thurnauer School of Music for seven years, and has lectured and offered interactive workshops and teaching series in over 20 universities, 50 cultural institutions and schools, and 30 businesses and organizations. (See list of Project Partners.)

For the past 15 years she has been a principal performing and teaching artist, as well as a program design specialist at THE LEARNING ARTS and CREATIVE LEAPS INTERNATIONAL, the leading authorities on the role of the arts in creativity and leadership. She continues to serve as the Artist Representative Board Member at CREATIVE LEAPS INTERNATIONAL.

Dianne has presented alongside leading authors and teachers like Margaret Wheatley, Carol Pearson, Ph.D., Judy Brown, Miha Pogotchnik, Richard Olivier, and numerous others.

Longtime arts infusion projects include:

The Peekskill City School District
1989 to present

Center for Creative Leadership
1990 to present

The New Jersey School for the Arts
1999 to 2002

The Center for Excellence in Municipal Management for the City of Washington D.C
1996 to present

Montclair College
1999 to present

Schenectady Schools
2000 to present

Norwalk City School District
2002 to 2005

Orange County Center for the Performing Arts
2001 to present

Want Dianne to design a Teaching Artist Residency specifically for you?
Contact her today.