Allowing Students to Express Themselves with Art

Posted May 6, 2022

PVF offers not one, but two programs to support arts education in the Bay Area! Funded by the Westly Foundation, the Arts Resource Grant Program provides grants for arts-related learning, from basic art supplies to field trips and musical instruments to theater performances. The Visiting Artist in the Classroom Grant program is specifically for teachers to invite artists or art historians to visit their classrooms and lead fun, hands-on art projects like sculpting, wood carving, poetry, or dancing.

Both programs are hit with students of all ages, K-12th grade and below are just some of the thank you letter excerpts we’ve received from grant recipients that depict the impact of these small immediate response grants:

“My students and I are so thankful for the grant awarded to us for our African American Monument hands on project, in honor of Black History Month. The students were engaged, learned more about well known and lesser known writers, civil rights activists, musicians, and more. The students were pleased to take their monument home. Ms. Kyrah Bishop modeled “how to” and allowed the students to express themselves. Thank you for making this a memorable experience for us.” – Arvanderlyn Campbell, Teacher at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Hayward.

“I wanted to thank you and the Geballe Family for fulfilling the Visiting Artist in the Classroom grant so that we could hire a Mariachi Band to perform for and with our Middle School beginner Mariachi students from McKinley Institute of Technology, Garfield Community School and Hoover Elementary School.

The Mariachi Tapatio performed for our students, but also opened discussions about Mariachi culture, genre, history, and instruments. They demonstrated the different instruments and techniques for the students and had a great Q&A with them!

Our students performed for them, and at the end we performed a piece together where the Mariachi Tapatio members performed next to our students! This was such an incredible experience for our young musicians and will hopefully continue to inspire them throughout their musical path!” – Julia Federico-Youngs, Teacher for the Redwood City School District

“I was lucky to get awarded the Arts Resource Grant through Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. My students helped me pick out various items such as letter beads that students use to make necklaces to take home to practice letters/sight words, materials to make friendship bracelets, wooden stamps to use with our writing center, and puppets to work on retelling stories and practicing English. A special thank you to The Westly Foundation who funded these materials!!

Having these materials makes learning fun for my students. Most of my students don’t have these fun supplies like these to use at home and our school budget doesn’t allow me to purchase them. My students have been enjoying using all of these materials as will many students in future years.” – Ms. Unger, Teacher at Los Arboles Elementary School in San Jose