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Arts Corps 

Description

Arts Corps brings hands-on arts classes to K-12th grade youth, primarily at schools and community centers serving low-income youth of color who often have no other opportunities for arts learning. Our program is proven to build creative habits – also known as 21st century skills, such as imagining possibilities, reflection, persistence, critical thinking, discipline – skills that build a lifelong foundation for learning.

Mission Statement
Arts Corps unlocks the creative power of youth through arts education and community collaboration.
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Arts Corps
4408 Delridge Way SW Ste 110 
Seattle 
WA
98106-1348 
(206) 722-5440 

Ms. Elizabeth Whitford 
Executive Director 

Programs

Arts Corps Programs

After-school arts classes & in-school arts residencies
Arts Corps addresses a deep inequity in educational opportunities by bringing high quality and culturally relevant arts learning into underserved schools. To ensure maximum access, our classes are free to youth and are offered where youth already are – schools, community centers, housing sites and residential treatment centers. 

Our programs cover the spectrum of arts disciplines from dance to visual arts to photography to music, and include popular classes such as Brazilian dance, theater, comic illustration, spoken word, sculpture and more. 

Residential Treatment Arts Classes
These classes designed to help abused and neglected children, who cannot safely return home, explore their feelings and experiences in a safe and creative way. Teaching artists for these classes are compassionate and experienced in creating safe, healing environments for vulnerable children to express themselves and explore their feelings and creativity.

Creativity Immersion Sites
In fall 2012, Arts Corps will launch an integrated arts learning program at two high-needs Seattle middle school. This program will model and measure the impact a whole-school arts program can having on students’ creative capacities, motivation, academic achievement and behavior. These “Creativity Immersion Sites” will include in-school arts residencies that partner with core teachers in various academic subjects, after-school classes that extend arts learning with the same teaching artists, and a strong collaboration between teaching artists, teachers, school administrators and parents.

 

Recent Successes and Current Challenges

This year, Arts Corps is collaborating and leading numerous efforts locally and nationally.

Seattle Public Schools has called on Arts Corps to define and assess outcomes of quality arts education. The goal is to add critical and creative thinking skills to the current assessment of artistic skill development.

Developing common goals and assessments
Arts Corps bringing its expertise on creative habits of mind to a collaboration with the Youth Development Executives of King County to support the Roadmap for Educational Results. This initiative will close the achievement gap in south Seattle and south King County – by developing common frameworks for schools and youth development programs to assess 21st century skills across this high need region.

The National Guild for Community Arts Education, ACT Theatre and other local and national arts education organizations are tapping Arts Corps for training and support in developing culturally responsive programming and anti-racist organizational practices.

Carnegie Hall has selected Arts Corps to be part of its Musical Connections national network. The purpose is to develop shared evaluation tools and best practices for high needs settings, such as our work at residential treatment centers and housing sites.

Arts Corps is raising funds to support reduced-rate subsidies for our arts classes for schools serving a majority of students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

Evaluation


Arts Corps believes that arts education is an important means for young people to develop their creative talents and individual interests. As access to arts education in public schools declines, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color, Arts Corps steps in and offers classes, currently working in 40 sites (including schools, community centers, low-income housing sites and residential treatment centers) around the region.

Use of Best Practices
Arts Corps offers classes based on the schools’ needs, from after-school programs to in-school workshops and residencies. They conduct a rigorous evaluation (including interviews, focus groups and surveys) of the organization each year, in an effort to strengthen the quality and aims of its programs.

They employ excellent teaching artists and utilize veteran teaching artists to mentor and support new faculty. Their teaching artists receive ongoing professional development and training, as well as peer support through cohort networks.

Accessibility and Cultural Competency
Arts Corps focuses on youth with the least access to arts learning opportunities, particularly children in low-income neighborhoods and youth of color. They offer highly subsidized rates to the highest need schools. Last year, two-thirds of their partner sites served a majority of youth who qualified for free- and reduced-price lunch, and 78 percent of the students were youth of color. They work to have their teaching artists be representative of the youth they are serving, and approach all their programming with an equity and diversity lens.

Collaboration
They partnered with six other youth arts education organizations and developed the Seattle Arts Education Consortium. Goals of the consortium were to improve the quality of each member’s program evaluations and assessments, share best practices in arts education programming, develop and implement professional development for teaching artists and generate consistent messages around research findings and the impact of arts education on young people. Arts Corps is working on developing a formal partnership with Seattle Public Schools, with the hopes of tying learning goals in the arts to overall learning goals for the district.

Grant History with The Seattle Foundation:

Grants Awarded through The Seattle Foundation Grantmaking Program:

DateAmountPurpose
9/10/2011 $10,000.00support general operating expenses.
12/10/2008 $25,000.00support general operating expenses.
10/5/2006 $25,000.00support general operating expenses.
9/16/2004 $7,500.00support training for the teaching artists.
3/18/2004 $32,750.00support general operating expenses.

Financials

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