School & Community Outreach

Artivate supports local and touring artists to serve at community-based organizations. Our mission is to bring experiences in the arts to children and local communities in the hopes of enriching lives. The venues at which we have served include public libraries, schools, botanical gardens, museums, and theaters.

We work with schools and other community organizations to design and plan programs. Our diverse artist roster offers many kinds of performances and cultural experiences, having the ability to serve a wide range of audiences. Many artists provide the option of doing workshops or residencies; small groups of students participate in sequential workshops with the artist to extend learning and enhance core curriculum concepts. A residency is a professional performance followed by a series of workshops that usually includes a culminating performance with the participating students.

Through interactive performances, our artists at Artivate inspire audiences to see the world through the lens of different cultures. Our programs provide entertaining and educational qualities, which help audience members develop a greater awareness of self-expression and understanding of others.

Our artists also offer professional development workshops. Contact us to discuss bringing one of our experienced teaching artists in to your school or business to lead one.

EDIT-CROP - Prakriti Dance - residency at St. Paul's School 2018

Artivate Customized Arts Experiences

This fall, many schools across the region started the year with hybrid or fully virtual learning experiences. Some libraries, parks, theaters, and other community spaces have begun to reopen gradually, with limited capacity, while others have remained closed. Bringing arts programming to communities is certainly more of a challenge these days – but with some creativity and innovation, we can help make these experiences happen.

Our professional artists have been exploring new ways to continue providing programming, connecting with schools and communities via virtual platforms or carefully adapting to accommodate safety procedures and physical distancing. Some artists have developed programming specifically tailored to online platforms, while others have creatively modified workshops or performances to follow new guidelines for indoor and outdoor spaces.

We can help you find an artist and program that best suits your needs, while navigating the often complex array of goals, expectations, schedules, and logistics. We can guide you to artists who can customize a performance or workshop that will enhance teachers’ curriculum, promote cultural learning, or provide something for families to enjoy together.

With a 25-year history of collaborating with a diverse group of skilled, engaging artists, we welcome the chance to talk about new ways to deliver educational arts experiences to your school, library, or community group. Contact us to learn more.

Contact Us

Phone: 301-588-7525
Fax: 301-588-1618
info@goartivate.org

Street Address:
8455 Colesville Road, Suite 202
Silver Spring MD 20910

Mailing Address:
PO Box 11242
Takoma Park, MD 20913

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VISION

Professional artists enriching and inspiring every community through culturally diverse arts experiences.

MISSION

Artivate connects artists and communities in order to facilitate engaging, educational, and inspiring arts experiences for all. We partner with professional artists representing a wide range of artistic disciplines and cultural traditions to provide high quality, interactive programs for schools, libraries, theaters, detention centers, and other community sites across Maryland, the District of Columbia, and northern Virginia.

HISTORY

Artivate was established in 1995 as Class Acts Arts, the educational outreach arm of the Institute of Musical Traditions, a Maryland non-profit focused on presenting concerts which preserve and promote American and international folk traditions. Founded by community arts activist, Busy Graham, Class Acts Arts served roughly 25,000 students and teachers with 80 school programs that first year, working with seven touring artists: dancers, storytellers and musicians. Now 25 years later, Artivate facilitates an average of 1,300 programs a year, reaching more than 200,000 children, teens and families at 250 sites across the Greater Washington, DC area, providing programs for libraries, community organizations, local theaters, town festivals, and correctional facilities, as well as schools. Designed in response to a demand for high quality, ethnically diverse cultural arts programs in schools, our roster has expanded to over 32 solo or ensemble artists, one-third of whom tour nationally, and now includes theater and visual arts. Many of the artists embody their cultural heritage, including artists from Argentina, Ecuador, India, Egypt, Ghana, Ukraine, and Quebec. In addition to our partnerships with dozens of professional artists and public and private schools, we collaborate with other arts education organizations and presenters such as Smithsonian Associates, Wolf Trap National Park for Performing Arts, Hylton Performing Arts Center, M-NCPPC’s Publick Playhouse, and other local theaters to develop programming and supplement tours.

In 2000, founder Graham designed and launched Project Youth ArtReach (PYA). Initially created to address the benefit of expressive outlets for incarcerated youth, PYA has grown from one detention site with only a handful of workshops to more than 300 programs per year at some six sites annually, and now engages detained men and women as well as teens. In addition to educational workshops in visual, literary and performing arts, we provide a variety of performances (20-25 per year) for larger groups inside some detention sites. Working with the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, and The Choice Program of the Shriver Center at UMBC, Project Youth ArtReach has received local and national recognition for its excellent curriculum and meaningful impact.