Mondavi Center > Arts Education > ArtsBridge

Welcome

Mondavi Center ArtsBridge integrates the resources of the Mondavi Center Professional Development program with UC Davis academic departments in service of our regions’ K-12 teachers and curricula. Our mission is to provide high quality arts education to K-12 schoolchildren, focusing on schools with diverse populations of English Language Learners who might best benefit from the cross-curricular vocabulary building impacts of arts instruction.Skills developed through the arts, such as creative thinking, problem solving, and collaboration, benefit children throughout their lifetimes. Arts education integration can be used as a catalyst for whole school change, addressing vital issues such as academic achievement, professional support for teachers, and increased parental involvement in the education of their children.

The mission of Mondavi Center ArtsBridge is:

To provide ongoing instruction in the arts for K-12 students in a manner that allows them to explore their own creativity while benefiting from the intrinsic and cross-curricular value of the arts;
To provide continuous, capacity building professional support for K-12 teachers that affords unique opportunities to integrate the arts into the traditional curricula in ways that address both local classroom needs as well as state and national standards in the arts;
To provide school-based service learning opportunities for top university students in the performing arts;
To promote and present career pathways in the arts among highly qualified university students; and
To conduct and disseminate research on partnerships in the visual and performing arts that informs local educators, policymakers, and the public at large.

Strategies used by ArtsBridge are well aligned with bipartisan educational agendas that value the arts as a fundamental component of the core curriculum in K-12. The education reform principles of ArtsBridge are that our nation’s public schools need arts education as a regular component of a comprehensive curriculum that will lead to student success, and that universities should apply their vast stores of expertise and personnel on behalf of K-12 improvements in teacher support and child learning.

Mondavi Center ArtsBridge is part of a network of 22 universities in 13 states and Northern Ireland, and their surrounding schools that confronts the problem of the elimination of the arts from K-12 schools. The arts are a critical component of education - they provide an alternative means to reach out to disadvantaged learners, particularly those with language acquisition delays. Through ArtsBridge projects in urban and low-income areas, using dramatic and visual arts and digital technology, students have developed their creativity and imagination, improved their language skills, increased their motivation to succeed in academic learning, and reinforced their values of peace, community and diversity. ArtsBridge is also a means for university students to provide creative service to their communities while learning the value of social activism and developing longterm commitments to help the disadvantaged.

ArtsBridge is a model for the reinvigoration of the Morrill Act, which created the nation's public universities with the stipulation that they support in perpetuity the socio-economic well-being and educational needs of the citizenry. Since its start in 1996, ArtsBridge has expanded to deliver arts curriculum to over 300,000 pupils, professional support for over 1,500 overworked teachers in time of heavy budget cuts, and scholarship support for nearly 4,000 university arts students. ArtsBridge America is supported by grants from federal, state and municipal governments; private foundations and corporations; and individuals. In 1998 ArtsBridge was the recipient of a national dissemination award from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and has received several awards for its work with schools and communities.

The ArtsBridge package that Mondavi Center provides to our partner schools includes:

20 hours of arts instruction coaching throughout a Quarter-long classroom project, taught by an undergraduate or graduate UC Davis student;
An opportunity for teachers to participate in a series of Mondavi Center Professional Development workshops presented throughout the academic year. These workshops are aligned with the State of California VAPA Content Standards and focus on providing K-12 educators with tools to teach dramatic art techniques in sequential ongoing learning instruction;
An invitation for teachers to participate in The California Arts Project’s regional Pathways to Understanding the Arts Disciplines Institute for K -6 educators in Music, Dance, Theatre, and Visual Arts. These in-depth 72 hour institutes focused on one arts discipline qualify for NCLB HOUSSE points and professional growth hours. Each institute focuses instruction on the basic processes, academic language, techniques, skills and knowledge of the discipline aligned to the Visual and Performing Arts Content standards.
An invitation for school administrators and teachers to attend the Annual Mondavi Center Educators’ Preview Party.

Mondavi Center ArtsBridge has been endorsed by the California Department of Education as a recipient of Arts and Music Block Grant funding for professional development.