The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) announced the 2023 District Award winners, including a Best of District II Award for a video project led by the Lewis Center’s web & multimedia strategist Jon Sweeney. In the prize-winning video, Sweeney tells the story of how Princeton Atelier students help develop the original rock musical Athens, Georgia.
In the Atelier course “Athens, Georgia” offered in spring 2022, students had the opportunity to collaborate with Tony Award-winning composer Stew and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon on a rock musical based on the Greek play, The Frogs. The Princeton Atelier prides itself on offering interdisciplinary courses “that will happen only once” and the “Athens, Georgia” course was no exception. The communications team led by Sweeney traveled inside the classroom to capture the unique process of creating a rock musical, focusing on how Princeton students helped shape a project aimed for Broadway.
The documentary is anchored by interviews with students and the instructors who tell the story of the musical’s evolution from the first day of class to the final staged reading. Cinéma vérité video clips and a rock music soundtrack—provided by the musical’s original score and performed by the students—enhance the video story.
The Lewis Center’s Office of Communications has earned several CASE awards in past years for their work in print and digital media and video communications.
About CASE
The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a global, not-for-profit membership association with a vision to advance education to transform lives and society.
Headquartered in Washington D.C., CASE is the home for advancement professionals, inspiring, challenging, and equipping them to act effectively and with integrity to champion the success of their institutions. CASE defines the competencies and standards for the profession of advancement, leading, and championing their dissemination and application with more than 97,000 advancement professionals at 3,100 member institutions in 80 countries.
Broad and growing communities of professionals gather under the global CASE umbrella. Currently these include alumni relations, development services, communications, fundraising, government relations, and marketing. These professionals are at all stages of their career and may be working in universities, schools, colleges, cultural institutions, or other not-for-profits. CASE uses the intellectual capital and professional talents of an army of volunteers to advance its work, and membership includes many corporate partners in the education sector.
