Leap Arts in Education

Leap Arts in Education provides standards-based arts learning in multiple disciplines. The organization’s residency programs place professional teaching artists in schools to provide customized programs that are relevant to students’ unique needs. In a typical academic year, its artists residencies serve over 8,000 mostly low-income K-8 students in 25 Bay Area schools. Leap Arts in Education conducts rigorous evaluations and provides professional development for its teaching artists, helping to advance educational equity and transform arts education in the region. Support of Leap Arts in Education aligns with the Performing Arts Program’s Youth strategy through its Program Delivery substrategy.

Leap Imagination in Learning was founded in 1979 in response to California’s Proposition 13, which dramatically reduced state funding for education, effectively eliminating the arts from public elementary schools. Each year, the organization works with professional teaching artists to provide high-quality standards-based arts education opportunities in multiple disciplines to K-12 students during the school day. In the 2012-2013 school year alone, Leap artists conducted seventy-five in-school classroom residencies for thirty-two schools, 297 classrooms and 7,425 students across the Bay Area. With support from the Hewlett Foundation, the organization plans to strengthen its professional development program for teaching artists, increase and enhance program staff support at schools, and diversify and grow its funding streams.