About Our Executive Director

Anne Harvey is the founder and Executive Director of Dazzle

Ms. Harvey is a leading advocate for the community as well as those with developmental disabilities, mental retardation and mental health issues.

She founded Dazzle School of Visual & Performing Arts, Inc. in 2002 to provide arts-with-education programs and training for this purpose. Since that time Dazzle has become a waiver certified, after-school respite program provider through Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities and the Finger Lakes DDSO serving those individuals and their families with mental health issues, special education and disabilities including but not limited to CP, Down Syndrome and Mental Retardation. She has recently founded and piloted the PosABILITIES program for those with Autism and related disorders. This program is currently opened to all other disabilities. She is well versed in American Sign Language and the reading and transcription of Braille.

She holds a degree in Human Services from Empire State College and a Theatre Arts Degree from FingerLakes Community College. Ms. Harvey has provided classroom instruction in arts with education at Rush-Henrietta, West Irondequoit, Gates Chili, Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Continuing Developmental Services, Monroe County Fair Association, Urban League of Rochester, Center For Disability Rights, Leopold Day Care Center, Community Place of Rochester, PRALID and the FingerLakes DDSO at Monroe Developmental Center.

The Rochester City School District has recently contracted with Ms. Harvey to work as an artist-in-residency with city youth with special needs on an on-going three-year contract encouraging and providing inclusion in the arts thru the schools as well as a 10-month contract to work in alternative education with 30 city youth again with special needs.

Some of the programs which she has created for the community are the FUTURES program, a program of financial literacy, the Go-Kart program where the youth learn teamwork, simple equations, use of simple tools in building a go-kart, the Kidspeak program where the youth create their own ideas of everyday issues and then write a script and present a community production at Dazzle Theatre and at School #28 where this program originated, the We Love Kids program in collaboration with master musician Mr. David Mancini, Dazzle’s Music Outreach Program which takes music and entertainment out in the community to nursing homes, hospitals and churches, Stand up, Speak out, a program for communication and Public Speaking skills, the 100,000 Voices program in collaboration with WXXI and the University of Rochester Medical Center where youth with disabilities produced three, 3 minute videos about issues for emerging adults, the Youth Run Productions program which enables youth with disabilities as well as inclusion in the community to run theatre programs at Dazzle Theatre, as well as the various arts-with-education programs offered by Dazzle School as a whole.

Ms. Harvey is a former officer of the local chapter of SCORE, a former board member of the Monroe County Fair Association working with the youth in the arts, a former planning commissioner for the City of Canandaigua serving a 7-year term and is currently serving on the advisory boards of RCTV-Rochester, New York and FLTV-Canandaigua, New York. She was employed by the FingerLakes DDSO at Monroe Developmental Center and retired five years ago after serving 33 years working with those with developmental disabilities and has recently been awarded the Advocacy Center’s Community Impact Award for her work in the field of disabilities in the community. She has volunteered with the City of Rochester’s Biz Kids program for the past eight years and has taken training in working with those who are visually impaired from ABVI in Rochester, New York. In the years 1966 thru 1968 she volunteered at the Rochester State Hospital (now Rochester Psych. Center) in the Howard and Orleans buildings with those individuals diagnosed with mental retardation four evenings per week.

Ms. Harvey has traveled to France, England, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Egypt, Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Hawaii, Leichenstein, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Brazil, Argentina and China researching the arts and their customs and cultures to enable her to bring back knowledge and education for the community, those with mental health issues, disabilities, mental retardation and their families via theatre productions, cultural programs and travelogues.