The Culturally Responsive Arts Education Initiative is a new effort of the Endowments’ Arts & Culture Program, in partnership with the foundation’s Education Program. The initiative aims to bring the power of the arts to bear on the particular educational challenges facing African American children. It is based on empirical and anecdotal evidence that the arts, positive racial identity and culturally responsive pedagogy can lead to increased achievement and resilience in African American children.

Towards this end, we have supported projects in select Pittsburgh Public Schools and Propel Charter Schools that will employ the arts of the African Diaspora and incorporate the culture of the students in curricular and instructional planning, implementation and assessment. While the initiative focuses on African American children because of the issue of racial disparities in education, we firmly believe that the increased incorporation of African American culture into the school curriculum is a gain for all children, who then benefit from thoughtful conversations regarding diversity and inclusion in our community.

To learn more about this area of work, see the executive summary or full report for “Cultural Responsiveness, Racial Identity and Academic Success: A Review of Literature” by Drs. Mary Stone Hanley and George Noblit of George Mason University and University of North Carolina, respectively. To learn more about the initiative's developing framework, see the “Seven Core Themes of the Culturally Responsive Arts Education Initiative.”