Arts Education
The Arts Endowment’s arts education program is focused on pre-K to 12th-grade students and the educators and teaching artists who support them. The agency’s funding is focused on providing dance, music, theater, visual arts, literary arts, and media arts education for all students and closing the opportunity gap for students who have the least arts education access. The Arts Endowment implements an ambitious strategy that combines grantmaking with national and state leadership as well as data and research initiatives to ensure every student is engaged through an excellent arts education, which is essential for developing America's next generation of creative and innovative thinkers.
The National Endowment for the Arts recognizes the important role of arts education in educating, engaging, and empowering youth. Arts education can help to support the social and emotional learning needs of students, helping them to succeed both in and out of school. For more information on the benefits of arts education, check out our Back to School page.
Grantmaking
Around 75 percent of arts education grants directly engage underserved populations:
Direct Learning grants increase student knowledge and skills in the arts, helping them reach their full potential.
Professional Development grants build the capacity of urban and rural classroom teachers and teaching artists to effectively teach and measure student learning in the arts.
Initiatives
Arts Education Partnership
The nation’s hub for arts and education leaders, building their leadership capacity to support students, educators, and learning environments through research, reporting, counseling, and convening.
State Data Infrastructure Project for Arts Education
To promote more and better information in young people’s access to, and participation in, arts education, the State Data Infrastructure Project for Arts Education provides a suite of groundbreaking tools and resources and case studies to help stakeholders extract, analyze, and report on data about arts education.
Arts Education Data Toolkit Webinar (3/24/21)
Professional Development Institute for State Arts Agency Arts Education Managers
The annual Professional Development Institute for state arts agency arts education managers provides meaningful leadership development and technical assistance for this field.
State Education Agencies Directors of Arts Education
An annual leadership grant supports professional development for state education agency directors of arts education, which consists of those persons at state education agencies whose responsibility is education in the arts.
