What Is ArtistYear?
MISSION
ArtistYear exists to address inequities in creative learning for K-12 students via a National Service Arts Corps.
VISION
Our vision is to democratize access to creative learning so those we serve may reap the academic benefits, critical-thinking skills, and social-emotional growth that come through creative engagement.
Our Values
Our Core Values are Curiosity, Creativity, Community, and Service. In all of our endeavors, ArtistYear staff and Resident Teaching Artists strive to live the following statements:
- We are CURIOUS, and approach our work by seeking to understand.
- We CREATE, searching for opportunities to manifest new ideas and paths forward within our organization and the schools and regions we serve.
- We bring people together to support COMMUNITY.
- We SERVE through the work of our Resident Teaching Artists, seeking to center the needs of students and families in our partner schools and communities.
What We Do
Since inception in 2015, ArtistYear has addressed inequities in arts education for K-12 students, ensuring that low-income students in America have the opportunity to reap the social-emotional and academic benefits of arts learning.
Through a unique model as a service arts corps, we develop, support, and train exceptional recent higher education arts graduates across artistic disciplines as full-time Resident Teaching Artists (formerly known as Fellows) in schools that receive Title I funding to deepen the quality of and exposure to the arts, all while enhancing school climate and capacity and providing all the attendant benefits of arts learning.
HOW
Once trained, RTAs collaborate with their service site to expand and deepen arts offerings via:
- Partnering with teachers to enhance arts instruction in the general classroom setting.
- Arts Clubs
- Pull-out instruction with small groups of students
- Arts Integration in Core Academic Subjects
- School-wide arts initiatives.
Each RTA serves between 50-250 unduplicated K-12 students providing about 2 hours of arts education per-week, per-student during a typical school year.
What is a Citizen-Artist?
Throughout human history, the arts have yielded proven personal and public benefit, strengthening citizens and communities. As our nation is becoming more diverse, schools are simultaneously growing more segregated. Artists and The Arts have an important role to play in bridging this divide and sparking dialogue, empathy, and progress. A Citizen-Artist is one who contributes to society through the transformative power of art. We believe that art can empower the active youth citizenship necessary for vibrant, compassionate, and collaborative communities.