Do you provide arts education to schoolkids? The City of Sacramento wants to know
Artist Orlando Molina works with students from 916Ink
Do you work with an organization that brings arts enrichment and education to students in Sacramento-area schools? If your answer is, “yes,” then the city’s Office of Arts + Culture wants to hear from you. In partnership with local school districts, the city’s arts education lead Melissa Cirone is launching artlook®, a tool that provides up-to-date information on arts education in the Sacramento area. Arts organizations that work with area schools are encouraged to complete a simple survey about the mission, discipline and current program offerings that will be added to the catalog.
"Arts education is an important part of a well-rounded education and contributes significantly to student mental health and academic achievement,” said Megan Van Voorhis, Cultural & Creative Economy Manager for the City of Sacramento. “artlook® will give us the critical information we need to ensure equitable access to arts education in Sacramento."
The artlook® platform for Sacramento was developed with Ingenuity, an arts advocacy and data company based in Chicago. As more schools and organizations complete the survey, the tool will contain thousands of data points, providing the Office of Arts + Culture and its education partners with critical information to make strategic decisions about the arts in Sacramento public schools. In its first year, 130 schools will participate in the artlook® platform with additional schools slated to join in 2022. The Sacramento County Office of Education is also partnering with the city in this effort to use the data in artlook® to create and promote county-wide initiatives for arts education.
For the arts organizations in the Sacramento area, the artlook® platform offers a unique opportunity to connect with more schools and more students. Schools and arts administrators will be able to connect with arts programming from around the city based on information added by providers and find the best fit for the discipline and age group the school is working with. Arts teachers and administrators will also benefit by having a central location to search for arts enrichment and education providers that have been added to the system. In the 2018 Creative Edge report, arts education was listed as the top priority for City of Sacramento residents when it came to arts, culture and the creative economy.
The general public will have access to artlook® once the survey is wrapped up and closed sometime in early 2022, Cirone said. For more information and to get started, contact mcirone@cityofsacramento.org
