The California Arts Council has announced a grant award of $54,000 to the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art as part of its Arts Education Exposure Grant Program.
With support from the California Arts Council, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art will host school tours with hands-on art activities for Central Coast schools in 2023 and 2024. CAC funds will also support transportation subsidies for the schools to expand visual arts access within low-income communities and Title 1 schools.
The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art’s school tour program provides the visual arts education that is lacking in many of our region’s schools. According to a February 2022 article in CalMatters, only one in five public schools in California has a dedicated teacher for traditional arts programs like music, dance, theater, and art, with schools serving Black and Latino populations the least likely to have arts access. The Museum’s tour program will enable non-arts teachers to incorporate visual arts programming and artistic literacy into their daily curriculum, and transportation subsidies for Title 1 schools will directly benefit historically underserved student populations.
The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art was featured as part of a larger announcement from the California Arts Council, with grant awards for its Cycle B totaling more than $41 million for more than 900 grants supporting artists, culture bearers, and cultural workers throughout the state of California.
“The resilience and creativity of California’s arts and cultural field in these last three years has been remarkable,” said California Arts Council Director Jonathan Moscone. “We are proud to be able to support the great work that California’s artists, culture bearers and cultural workers are doing within our communities as an indelible part of our state’s identity.”
“We are honored to receive this important grant and to partner with area educators in offering engaging and innovative education programs. The visual arts are invaluable in teaching problem solving, curiosity and empathy,” said SLOMA Executive Director Leann Standish.
Central Coast teachers and school administrators can book their free school group tours at sloma.org/visit/tours or by calling the Museum of Art at (805) 543-8562.