Arts Education

The Purple Silk Orchestra learns to play the yueqin (moon guitar) at Lincoln Elementary School, Oakland, CA. Photo courtesy of the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership at the Alameda County Office of Education.

Years of budget cuts have decimated arts education in California public schools. In response, since 2005, the Performing Arts Program, in collaboration with the Foundation’s Education Program, has made a series of grants totaling more than $10 million as part of an initiative to encourage the state to follow its own Visual and Performing Arts content standards. At the heart of these investments is a goal to provide a quality education that includes the arts – music, dance, theater, and visual arts – to California’s 6.5 million K-12 public schoolchildren. As part of the Performing Arts Program’s strategy, support for arts education increases participation in arts experiences and helps to ensure that young people have access to the arts. The arts education grants to date have focused on three areas:

Supporting Research to Define the Scope and Scale of the Problem

The Foundation funded a series of reports, beginning with “An Unfinished Canvas,” which identified the current state of arts education in California public schools. This report has been used by educators, policymakers, and arts organizations alike to advocate for arts education. Five additional reports outline obstacles to quality arts education, including instructional time, funding, and professional development for teachers.

Advocating Increased Support for Arts Education

The Performing Arts Program awarded grants to advocacy organizations that promote arts education with both “bottom up” and “top down” approaches. Current grantees include the California Alliance for Arts Education, which coordinates with multiple stakeholders to push for arts education reform at the state and local level, and the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association, which enhances arts education at the district level from within the state’s education community. The California State PTA, another grantee, has ramped up their statewide arts education advocacy efforts through a Hewlett-funded pilot program to engage PTA parents in making their voices heard in support of the arts as part of a quality education.

Funding Exemplary Programs in Arts Education

The Foundation funds the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership in the Alameda County Office of Education. This initiative is a successful network of teachers, school administrators, parents, businesses, artists, arts organizations, universities, and community members, all working together to learn how best to deliver arts education to the county’s students. The Alliance supports development of teaching skills, shares teaching techniques, and involves parents in the effort. The Music National Service Initiative, another grantee, takes an innovative approach with is pilot program MusicianCorps, a “musical Peace Corps” that deploys newly graduated musicians to teach in disadvantaged public schools in the Bay Area.

The Performing Arts Program is not accepting unsolicited Letters of Inquiry for its Arts Education grantmaking at this time. We encourage Bay Area performing arts grantseekers to explore funding opportunities provided with intermediaries and regranters with which we partner.