Announcing our 2025 Arts Advocate

Marquis Studios is delighted to announce that the 2025 Arts Advocate Award will be presented to Christopher Reda, Principal of P10X - an NYC District 75 school located in the Bronx.

Chris will be recognized at the 2025 Spring Benefit for his unwavering commitment to ensuring that every student in his school has the opportunity to participate in the arts. Marquis Studios has been partnering with P10X for over twenty years and under Chris's leadership, that partnership has expanded and deepened. Chris is always willing to go the extra mile for his students and is a relentless advocate for sustaining funding for arts in the schools. He is an enthusiastic supporter of our Teaching Artists and always works to create opportunities to share student work with the larger 10X community, including parents, teachers and service providers.

The Arts Advocate Award was the brainchild of Marquis Studios founder, David Marquis. David wanted a way to celebrate people who support the arts, either personally or professionally, and honor those who have impacted the lives of those served by Marquis Studios arts programs. Over the years, Marquis Studios has honored many outstanding leaders with the Arts Advocate Award. The award recognizes people who are compassionate, generous, and dedicated to helping bring the arts to NYC public schools; people who are leaders in their communities; people who inspire and empower others and who make a real difference in the lives of New York City public school students. Past recipients of this award include the following:

· Dorothy Devlin - Founding partner, DEVLINHAIR Productions, and longtime member of the Marquis Studios Board of Directors
· Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith – Founder, The Kennedy Center Office of VSA & Accessibility (formerly Very Special Arts)
· Carmen Farina – former Chancellor, New York City Public Schools
· Paul King – former Executive Director, New York City Public Schools Arts Office

Marquis Studios recognizes the tremendous contributions of those that support arts education in New York City's public schools through their work with Marquis Studios and we celebrate these contributions at our annual Spring Benefit.

About Our Honoree
Christopher Reda is currently the Principal of P10X, a NYCPS Citywide District 75 program for students with severe special needs. He supervises approximately 90 classes with 650 Pre-Kindergarten through High School students across nine co-located school sites throughout the Bronx.

Mr. Reda began his career in Special Education in 2001 and has been with the P10X organization since 2005. He became Principal in September 2017 and has represented District 75 on the Chancellor’s Principal Advisory Council. P10X’s Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program has been recognized not only by the District, but the Chancellor’s Office for its thorough data collection and IEP-aligned instruction.

Mr. Reda’s instructional focus for P10X is building communication skills for all learners. His vision for students is to be as independent as possible to improve the success rate for post-secondary outcomes, and his mission is to “give students a voice and a choice.” It has been this infusion of arts, within the structures and philosophies of ABA that has further enhanced the vision and mission of giving all students a voice, through exposing them to and teaching them new forms of self-expression.  This has led some students to learn how to express their emotions, comment on the events of their day in new ways, or for some students, the ability to explore career options within the Art world.  

Within this data-based approach to instruction, lies his belief that the Arts is a crucial content area that should be infused into all classrooms and all subjects. Not only does this enhance their learning but provides lasting impacts both for the students and teachers.  Mr. Reda has taken an active role within all aspects of ensuring that our long-standing partnership with Marquis has continued to grow every year. This includes working on grants to secure funding, scheduling multiple residencies at each site, and working with the team to provide students with opportunities to explore the different Arts and learn new and varied forms of self-expression.  This has led all students to showcase their work in various ways, from having students with Autism on stage in a Circus Arts performance to showcase their balance and self-expression, to having students with multiple disabilities use laser painting technique to craft paintings that were featured in art galleries.

His partnership with Marquis Studio has helped Teachers to effectively utilize the Blueprints for the Arts as the foundation for the techniques and strategies that his art teachers use in the classroom and has then worked with the teachers to incorporate these strategies in alignment with various fine motor, sensory and IEP goals to provide our students with new avenues to make gains.  These modifications and utilization of new instructional approaches have grown through Mr. Reda’s continuous goal of ensuring that all classes are able to participate in an arts residency.