Arts education program receives $25,000 from National Endowment for the Arts

Submitted by Art Encounter

Art Encounter has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $25,000. This grant will support the expansion of ARTiculations, an in-school art and writing residency program for students in Chicago Public Schools.

Art Encounter is honored to be chosen as one of the 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awardees, totaling nearly $28.8 million in funding announced by the NEA as part of their first round of fiscal year 2023 grants. This will be Art Encounter’s first time receiving grant funding from the NEA.  

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson. “Projects such as this one with Art Encounter strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy.”  

ARTiculations is Art Encounter’s signature, long-running arts education residency for third through fifth graders in CPS schools. Co-led by a pair of specially trained teaching artists, this program fosters appreciation for the visual arts, builds art vocabulary and art-making skills and supports classroom writing goals. Over the course of 10 weeks, students discuss original artworks from Art Encounter’s traveling collection of work by professional local artists, create hands-on art projects based on the pieces they have discussed, and write journal entries describing their art pieces. The residency culminates with a field trip to visit one of Chicago’s world-class museums, where students participate in guided discussions using terms and concepts developed over the course of the program.  

Art Encounter thanks the NEA for giving them the opportunity to expand the reach of ARTiculations, which currently provides important art enrichment to more than 1,000 students annually in underserved Chicago public schools. This program is also supported by Art Encounter individual donors, school contracts through Ingenuity Inc. grants, the L & L Copeland Foundation, the Modestus Bauer Foundation and the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation. Organizational programming is also supported by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.