Twenty years ago, a group of Seattle teaching artists identified the inequities in arts education access and founded Arts Corps. Many of these artists had children in those schools and witnessed first-hand how low-income Black students and other students of color were left behind. Arts Corps has received 11 grants from the National Endowment for the Arts since 2004 for various multidisciplinary arts projects that aim to close the area’s access gap in arts education. Their programming reaches more than 3,000 students each year, of which approximately 72 percent are from low-income families and 84 percent are youth of color.

Read the complete story in the latest issue of American Artscape.