A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Achieving the Goals: Goal 1--All Children in America Will Start School Ready to Learn

The National Endowment for the Arts

Wolf Trap Foundation stART smART for Young Children -- Vienna, Virginia

The Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts program sponsors a Multicultural Education program, which is designed to expose preschool children to cultural diversity, and to involve their parents in education.

Organization

The Wolf Trap Institute is the chief education program of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, and has served over 481,000 children, parents, and teachers nationwide since 1991.

Funding

The Wolf Trap Foundation has used a variety of public and private funding sources to expand its program. In addition to the NEA, the Foundation collaborates with Head Start and the Fairfax Council Office for Children. Private grants from the Freddie Mac and Mobil Foundation got the program off the ground in 1993.

Services for Children

The project involves preschool students in developmentally appropriate performing arts activities which originate in parents' and teachers' and neighbors' cultural experiences. While teachers bring to the project an understanding of early childhood practices, the Wolf Trap Artists contribute their talents as professional performers and their expertise as artists-educators. The artists train teachers to continue using the performing arts as powerful teaching tools and active learning experiences which help children master a variety of important life and academic skills. Combined, their energies are particularly effective in reaching children and their families from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.

The National Endowment for the Arts in Education Program supports a variety of programs to promote arts in education. One such program is the Arts Plus Arts in Education Program. Arts Plus offers support for arts and education partnerships. Goals for Arts Plus are to support constructive, educational change so that the arts are central to the education and lives of students and to support artistic exploration and growth by arts professionals in their work with schools.

The projects that have been funded are long-term projects that bring together professional artists, teachers, students, and others to make the arts a basic part of education for students, and education a more basic part of the work or arts organizations.

In 1995, seven arts organizations that have teamed with local schools to integrate the arts into the curricula have been selected to receive Arts Plus funds from the Endowment. Since 1991, 28 Arts Plus partnerships involving over 100 arts organizations have been awarded.

Although the National Endowment for the Arts is being restructured for the coming fiscal year, it is expected that the educational function of the Endowment will continue. For information about future funding opportunities, please contact Abby Nelson at the National Endowment for the Arts, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 602, Washington, DC 20506.


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