Foundation seeds Sacramento Arts Education Consortium
A Foundation grant is helping bring arts education back to local schools
The Foundation’s recent $100,000 investment in the Sacramento Arts Education Consortium has a longterm aim: to create a more vibrant and equitable capital area by ensuring all young people enjoy ample opportunities to engage with arts in school.
Learn more about our arts grantmaking
The collaborative effort between the Foundation, the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission and its supporters, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s office, and 13 area school districts “will assure the sustained and growing effort to make arts education, culture, and creativity in schools an integral part of our city’s future,” said Mayor Steinberg at the Consortium’s launch.
“Arts and creative expression play a critical role in enhancing quality of life throughout the Sacramento region, so the dearth of arts education in capital area schools is devastating for students, particularly those who have limited opportunities to enjoy arts instruction outside of the classroom,” said Priscilla
Enriquez, our Chief Impact & Strategy Officer and a member of Mayor Steinberg’s Creative Edge Steering Committee.
Research has shown that bringing arts instruction into area schools and integrating arts experiences throughout the curriculum improves overall educational outcomes. Further, it is essential to fostering the next generation of artists and arts audiences,
ensuring the capital area’s creative ecosystem – and the benefits it brings to the health of our entire community – will flourish into the future.
“Today's youth are our future artists, our future arts supporters, and leaders of our arts organizations. All three combined make for a culturally vibrant city,” Enriquez said, noting the Foundation’s multi-year grant to fund the Consortium is aligned
with its initiative to Transform the Creative Economy and advances the recommendations of Sacramento’s new cultural plan, which was funded by a
grant from the Foundation. That grant was part of the $165,000 the Foundation awarded throughout the capital area to fortify regional arts in 2017.
SETTING THE STAGE FOR PIVOTAL CHANGE
By focusing on the root causes of local challenges, seeking solutions with long-term results, and supporting the organizations that tend to the vital needs of the capital area, we help create the conditions for meaningful transformation in the Sacramento region.