TED CANNING, a percussionist and native of Cleveland, Ohio, has done extensive freelance work in the northeast United States performing classical music, theater, big band and jazz.  His world music studies and performances include Ghanaian, Haitian, Brazilian and Senegalese drumming in a variety of ensembles.  From his start as a lead pan player and founding member of the Pandemonium Steelband of Wesleyan University, Ted now performs with the steel drum here in the US as well as in Europe and Latin America.  He performs in numerous styles, from Caribbean dance music to new classical works.  Ted Canning was the steel drum soloist in performances in Siena, Italy, Mexico City, Mexico and at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, and has performed with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Rochester, New York.  He has performed as well with national champions “Phase II Pan Groove” in Trinidad and Tobago, and with the Moods Pan Orchestra, Crossfire and the D’Radoes steelbands in Brooklyn, New York. 

Ted Canning now leads the Panloco Steelband, the Livingston County Community Steelband and the St. Michael’s Steelband.  He performs with the Pangaia Steelband, and the Trinidad and Tobago Steelband, both based in the greater Rochester, New York area, and has performed with “pan” players from Trinidad and around the world. 

He has worked with The New York State Literary Center for five years.  

DALE DAVIS’ distinguished career as a writer, educator, publisher, scholar, producer, dramaturge, and advocate for young people began as one of the founding poets of New York State Poets In The Schools. 1979, she co-founded The New York State Literary Center where she continues to serve as Executive and Artistic Director. Dale Davis has edited and published, through The New York State Literary Center, over six hundred books and anthologies of the writing of young people. She has written plays with young people that have been performed throughout New York State, and her installations, combining the writing of young people and her own photographs, have been exhibited in several prominent venues. In 1990, The New York State Literary Center’s Arts Education programs began to concentrate on disconnected youth, young people at highest risk for educational failure, in residential placement and day treatment facilities, juvenile detention centers, juvenile justice facilities, and jails. Dale Davis pioneered teaching literacy using hip-hop culture as an educational tool. She has written and directed three hip-hop theater pieces, adapted from the writing of the young people with whom she works that have been performed in juvenile justice facilities prisons, and jails. She has also edited and published a series of children’s books written by incarcerated adolescents. She has produced thirty CDs that feature the poetry, spoken word, and rap of the young people with whom she has worked. The New York State Literary Center’s work with high-risk young people has received national recognition from The National Alternative Education Association, The National Dropout Prevention Association, and Arts In Criminal Justice. In addition, Davis’ work has been featured in New York Magazine, on Tuft University’s Eliot Pearson Department of Child Development website, and praised by The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies Stop The Violence Through The Arts program.

In 2006 Davis founded New York State’s Arts In Correctional Education Network, which she presently administers for The New York State Literary Center.

She has worked with juvenile justice sites, lectured, and conducted teacher development programs throughout the country. As a recognized expert on Youth Culture, she served as a consultant to The Children’s Dignity Project, ABC Network and was selected to participate in Harvard University’s Institute on The Arts and Civic Dialogue, established by playwright and actor Anna Deavere Smith.  In 2004, her work was the subject of a Fox News Documentary. She recently consulted with the College Board on its National Arts In Education Task Force.

As an advocate for Teaching Artists, Dale Davis was one of the founders of the Association of Teaching Artists in 1998. In 2006 she became the Association of Teaching Artists’ first Executive Director. She develops and maintains the organization’s web site, Facebook page, and edits its listserv, which reach over 3,000 Teaching Artists daily. She is in communication with Teaching Artists nationwide and consults on training and professional development for Teaching Artists. She has presented on Teaching Artists and The Association of Teaching Artists throughout the country where The Association of Teaching Artists is looked to as a national model. She is a member of the Teaching Artist Certificate National Advisory Council, The University of The Arts.