Arts Access for All
Arts Access for All is designed to bring arts experiences to all Bay Area children. Through donor support, this special initiative underwrites the cost to deliver arts education to underserved schools and their students, helping principals and educators with limited resources provide hands-on arts learning that expands upon school curriculum.
What is Arts Access for All?
Young Audiences of Northern California connects professional artists with schools and brings essential arts learning and cultural resources directly to students. Our diverse roster of award-winning artists and ensembles spans four art disciplines: dance, music, theatre, and visual arts – and offers assembly performances, workshops, artist residencies, and professional development for classroom teachers.
How Does It Work?
Through donor support, Arts Access for All aims to reach 8,200 high-need Bay Area students this year who would not otherwise have access to hands-on arts learning.
Who Is Eligible?
Any Bay Area school with a majority of students enrolled in the Free and Reduced-Price Lunch program or lacking in resources to provide regular arts instruction is eligible to participate.
What Do Schools Receive?
Access to our roster of local artists, including nationally renowned musicians, dancers, actors and visual artists, representing 19 distinct world cultures, representing the diverse backgrounds of our many Bay Area communities.
Our First Arts Access for All Recipients
Chamber Music at Garfield School
10-Week Artist Residency
Quintento Latino is the leading performer of chamber music written by Latinx and Latin American composers. Garfield Community School is a public school in Redwood City. Garfield has 570 students, 97.5% of whom are Latinx, 64% English Language Learners, and 71% qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.
Quinteto Latino will work with two 5th grade classes (approximately 60 students). To prepare students for instrumental participation in 6th grade, the curriculum will focus on general musical concepts such as rhythm, pitch, tempo, improvisation, and ensemble performing. The project centers around the composition process as students learn to create and perform their own pieces for each other. The students will then perform their compositions at a culminating assembly with the full Quinteto Latino ensemble.
Choral Music and Contemporary Dance at 5 Middle & High Schools
Assembly Performances and Workshops
San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (SFGMC) and AXIS Dance Company bring powerful and socially-relevant assembly performances to Bay Area middle and high schools. With timely and necessary exploration of the challenges facing teens in today's America, these programs showcases honest and diverse perspectives through music and dance.
SFGMC’s program, RHYTHM – Reaching Youth through Music, fosters a better understanding of how the arts can encourage self-expression and collaboration amongst diverse peers, provides a basic understanding of music, and offers an introduction to musical composition and storytelling. Associate Artistic Director, Mitch Galli, conducts a master class with the school’s choir to prepare students for a 50-minute performance in front of the entire student body and alongside 40 chorus members.
AXIS Dance Company showcases contemporary dance choreography that emphasizes collaboration among people of all physical abilities. Students leave the performance with a broader definition of what dance can be and what a dancer looks like. AXIS conducts workshops with select high school classes, incorporating dance exercises and warm-ups with students, and inviting candid conversations about dance and disability.
Many thanks to The Bulleit Group and many indiviual donors that supported the Arts Access for All initiative.
