First Step Grants - Arts in Education

The First Step grant provides funding to arts organizations, schools, nonprofits, and government agencies committed to building community partnerships dedicated to improving the quality and quantity of arts education for K-12 students in public schools in Washington State.

The First Step program has the following key goals:

To engage school leadership, arts organizations, and community members in support of K-12 arts education.
To encourage and support newer and/or smaller arts education partnerships so that foundations will be strengthened and work can be sustained into the future.
To support the development of deeper and longer-term opportunities for learning in and through the arts, and systemic support for comprehensive arts education for all students, and to move beyond arts exposure / arts enrichment programs with lower long-term impact.
To support identification and implementation of the most needed “first steps” towards this vision of high quality, sustainable arts education programming.

First Step grants are similar in overall purpose to WSAC’s larger Community Consortium grant program, but these grants are designed to support partnerships in earlier stages of development and/or with a narrower scope. First Step grants may support a variety of steps towards improving teaching and learning in the arts, including curriculum development and improvement, assessment development and training, professional development for classroom teachers and/or local artists, and arts lessons in K-12 classrooms led by professional teaching artists.

First Step grants require partnerships between schools, parents, and professional arts education providers (i.e., arts organizations and/or independent teaching artists). Broader partnerships involving additional community organizations are encouraged. In all cases, program plans must be in alignment with the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) in the arts. For complete information on program parameters and application requirements, please refer to the First Step grant guidelines and application materials.

First Step Programs Around the State

In Fiscal Year 2011, five First Step programs were funded, for a total of $19,000. Funding levels for this grant program in Fiscal Year 2012 may range from $1,500-$5,000.