Grant Moves Arts Awareness Forward

Center ARTES is providing teachers in San Diego County with professional development in literacy and the arts thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Panta Rhea Foundation.

This is the second recent grant received by Center ARTES, joining a $200,000 grant from the Stuart Foundation that helped launch the ART=OPPORTUNITY program, a county-wide campaign focused on providing access to all children to a better education by improving literacy through the arts, including technical assistance to implement arts plans, professional development and mentoring.

Merryl Goldberg founded Center ARTES at Cal State San Marcos in 2003, creating an organization dedicated exclusively to arts education and arts integration in K-12 schools. Goldberg is a professor in CSUSM’s School of Arts and executive director of Center ARTES.

Teachers engaged in learning through the arts professional development will receive a copy of Goldberg’s book, “Arts Integration: Teaching Subject Matter through the Arts in Multicultural Settings.”

Teachers will also have an opportunity to meet with children’s book author Sara Pennypacker and illustrator Jon Klassen, and participate in workshops this spring and summer.

There will be 200 books distributed on Feb. 22 to San Diego Unified teachers and teaching artists who are participating in the “Learning through the Arts” program paid for with Title I funds. Center ARTES was key in designing the program and provided leadership and professional development for the last two years.

A book-signing event will be at the Creative Performing Media Arts School at 5050 Conrad Street in San Diego from 4-5:30 p.m. Cindy Marten, superintendent of San Diego Unified School District, will speak.

Center ARTES will host Pennypacker and Klassen in partnership with the ART=OPPORTUNITY grant to provide several workshops for teachers and teaching artists from March 1-4. The grant will also support a three-day arts and literacy boot camp in North County this June for teachers.

Visit the Center ARTES website for more information.