Raue Hires New Director For Education, Cultural Partnerships

CRYSTAL LAKE, IL — The Raue Center for Arts in Crystal Lake has hired a new director for education and cultural partnership.

Robin Irwin, native who appeared in the original Broadway cast of the Tony award-winning, "Titanic," and also appeared in Broadway's, "Grease," and "Dance of the Vampires," has joined the Raue.

“I am beyond excited to be returning to Crystal Lake—the place where my life-long love affair with the performing arts began,” Irwin said. “The understanding that the arts are essential to the life of a community has been baked into the DNA of the Raue Center for the Arts since its founding. I look forward to joining the exceptional staff of The Raue in furthering that goal, and to helping guide the next generation of artist-citizens to find that theater and arts skills are life skills.”

In recent years, Robin became the founding executive director of The Appalachian Center for the Arts, a full service arts center in Eastern Kentucky where she's credited with revolutionizing all the arts, both performing and visual. She’s served on several boards, but most recently the Kentuckians for the Arts, according to a news release from the Raue Center for the Arts.

“Building partnerships is a point of personal pride for me. The arts get so often talked about as something that is the exclusive province of the elite or privileged, but I’ve devoted my work life to amplifying the arts as a tool of healing hearts, opening minds, and as a medium that should pave the pathways to fun and joy.”

She's been a featured soloist with symphonies from Berlin to Barbados and has been an instructor at NYU Tisch School for the Arts, the New York Film Academy, and Montclair State University, as well as curriculum consultant and corporate educator for arts programs nationally. She has degrees from Northwestern University and Roosevelt University, as well as graduating from prestigious programs at NYU and The Commercial Theater Institute.

As director of education at Luna Stage, she built in-school residencies and developed cross-sector
partnership across the state and as a NJ State Arts Evaluator, according to the news release. She served as producing artistic director of Montclair State University’s professional development programming and for the Foxy Awards for six years, both resulting in streamlined arts education experience for over 5,000 students and educators

“Building partnerships is a point of personal pride for me. The arts get so often talked about as
something that is the exclusive province of the elite or privileged, but I’ve devoted my work life to
amplifying the arts as a tool of healing hearts, opening minds, and as a medium that should pave the pathways to fun and joy," she said.