Welcome Donald Fann!

Post date: Jul 28, 2015 5:06:43 PM

“All the world’s a stage,” and Grammy Award winner Donald Fann is making his entry as the theatre arts teacher at Stewarts Creek High School.Many of you are familiar with Fann’s work through the Arts Center of Cannon County, where he has served as Executive Director since 1995. Under his direction, the Arts Center has grown from an annual attendance of 3,000 into an award-winning theater serving a world-wide audience of over 150,000 through its facility, websites, publications, and recording projects.

However, you may be unfamiliar with Fann’s Spring Fed Records, an independent non-profit record label that has used field recordings and reissues of traditional recordings to build a catalog of over 40 titles which have been reviewed by major national and international music publications. In 2008 John Work III: Recording Black Culture won the Grammy Award for Album Notes.

As a long time arts education advocate, Fann designed and implemented a school matinee program that currently serves over 10,000 students per year. The program, based on the Kennedy Center model, provides graphically interesting, curriculum-based learning materials to each child attending a performance. Additionally, he initiated a partnership with Middle Tennessee State University to provide satellite broadcasts of classes geared to help students better understand the arts events. He also founded a residency program and a summer theater conservatory at The Arts Center.

Fann recently received the 2013 Governor’s Award for the Arts in Arts Leadership for contributions to the state’s arts community. At the ceremony Governor Bill Haslom said, “With all he has accomplished, Donald Fann has retained the heart of a teacher.”

Fann currently serves as the Vice Chair of Humanities Tennessee Board of Directors and is the former Chair of the Tennesseans for the Arts Board. He has served on panels for the Southern Arts Federation and Tennessee Arts Commission and was a founding member of Tennessee’s Peer Advisory Network.

A native of Woodbury, Tennessee, Fann graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in Theatre and has received training as a Teaching Artist from the Lincoln Center Institute and the Wolftrap Institute, Foxfire Training Program, and the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Peer Advisory Network. Fann lives on his family’s farm in Woodbury with his wife Cortilla and their three daughters.