Arts Education

Destiny Arts Center provides youth ages three to eighteen with free and low-cost dance, theater, martial arts, violence prevention, and youth leadership classes. Pictured here is its Youth Performance Company. Photo courtesy of Destiny Arts Center.

More than 800 students of all ages receive weekly music lessons at the Community School of Music and Arts. Photo courtesy of Community School of Music and Arts at Finn Center.

A dance class with guest faculty at California State Summer School for the Arts. Photo courtesy of Harris Hartsfield.

Young Audiences of Northern California's capoeira teacher/artist Marcelo Pereira works with seventh-grade students on Brazilian drumming techniques. Photo courtesy of Amy Evans.

Dance teachers and artists gather for a professional learning workshop at Luna Dance Institute. Photo courtesy of Luna Dance Institute.

The Community Music Center's Children's Chorus performs at the Rrazz Room in San Francisco. Photo courtesy of Pat Mazzera.

Marshall Hooper plays trumpet at the Young Artists Repertory Series at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. Photo courtesy of Jason Lew.

Members of Youth Speaks, an organization that works with nearly 40,000 Bay Area youth each year to develop their voices as leaders for social change. Photo courtesy of Youth Speaks.

Fourth-grade students participating in a theater residency program perform for their parents and teachers. The residency is made possible through Los Angeles County's Arts for All program. Photo courtesy of Derek Hanchi.

The Performing Arts Program helps give California students equal access to an education rich in the arts. The Program makes grants to create opportunities for students to engage in the arts at every level, from introductory programs to professional training. Arts education develops a lifelong interest in the arts, builds audiences for the future, and—particularly through the public education system—reaches a broad segment of students at a critical time in their development.

The Program’s grantmaking for arts education falls into three categories:

• Program delivery. We fund a wide variety of programs that provide arts education directly to students in school, after school, and out of school. We hope to increase the effectiveness of these programs by helping grantees reach more students and by encouraging the spread of the most effective methods to other organizations.
• Policy and advocacy. Our grantees advocate for policies that ensure that all public school students receive an education rich in the arts. Our grantees develop research to inform public education policymakers, work to make sure that all schools meet existing standards, and help to set priorities for arts education at the district and state levels. The Program reaches parents, educators, administrators, and policymakers to raise awareness and encourage them to advocate for measures that strengthen arts education programs in schools.
• Preprofessional training. Our Program aims to ensure that exceptionally talented youth who will mature into the next generation of great performing artists have opportunities to receive world-class training. Preprofessional training organizations prepare students in a variety of disciplines and nurture the talented young people who contribute to the Bay Area’s diverse, vibrant artistic community.

The Program is accepting Letters of Inquiry for its Program Delivery in Arts Education grantmaking at this time. For more information, click here. We encourage Bay Area performing arts grantseekers to explore funding opportunities with our Regranting Partners that provide support for arts organizations and individual artists.