Community Building - Advocacy

Arts for All has four goals. Number three is focused on advocacy efforts: create and empower advocates and conducting ongoing research and evaluation.

The goal aims to mobilize parents, arts supporters, students, and community and business leaders to advocate for sequential K-12 arts education. To achieve this, Arts for All partnered with Arts for LA in 2008 to develop an advocacy training program. The program was piloted in five Arts for All school districts during the 2009-10 year and a sustainable was recreated that could be adapted to every school district. Since then, Arts for LA has continued to develop community and district teams in seven additional districts.

The goals in each school district are to:

Gather interested people together and train them on strategies, techniques, and goals of arts advocacy
Help the team develop a strategy to reach more community members and grow their group
Motivate an empowered group of arts advocates to support arts education campaigns in their district

Support and sustain team growth into self-sufficient community groups with self-selected leadership and goals

Advocacy team structures, activity, and goals are unique to each district and reflect that district's arts education needs and priorities. Arts for LA is available to provide ongoing support and training to all arts education advocacy teams.

Interested in joining an advocacy team in your local school district? Click here. You can also visit the Campaign page to learn more about current Arts Education campaigns, or check out all Arts Education content here.

Advocacy Resources for School Districts

Advocacy toolkit on Arts for LA’s website

Research on the impact of arts education on student learning

Financial resources (state and federal)

Briefing paper on federal Investing in Innovation grant [UPDATED with final guidelines]

Guidelines for applying to the federal AEMDD grant

School Services California Cat Wizard Lookup Tool

How Arts Coordinators are funded throughout LA County

Usage of Art and Music Block Grant by 29 Arts for All School Districts