Smart needs art
Keep California’s classrooms creative with a donation on your state tax return
Take a minute or two to think back on some of your more sentimental childhood memories at school. Elementary, middle school, high school — even kindergarten or preschool. Focus your energy to put yourself in that time and place, using all your senses …
… OK.
Back to this moment. Where did you go? What were you doing? If we were to wager a guess, we’d be willing to bet that at least one of your flashbacks involved something creative, if you were one of those lucky enough to have arts made available to you at school.
Maybe you saw a picture you drew and carried home to its prideful place on the family refrigerator. Perhaps you heard the crash of cymbals as you marched onto the field, or felt the rush of nerves at your first audition for the school play. Or you tasted the paste (tsk, tsk!) as you assembled your latest papier-mâché masterpiece, or smelled the crayon’s wax as you colored — outside the lines, with whatever hue you pleased.
Now imagine where you’d be without those things upon which you so fondly reminisced. Taking part in the arts and creative activities at school did much more for you than simply leave behind pleasant memories, even if you aren’t playing Carnegie Hall or thanking the Academy. Whether or not you realize it, those experiences provided you with fundamental skills and knowledge that have contributed to your success as an adult — a fact that only gets truer as time goes by.
Arts in school did more for you than simply leave behind pleasant memories. Those experiences provided fundamental skills and knowledge that have contributed to your success as an adult — a fact that only gets truer as time goes by.
Creativity is now cited as the №1 desired skill in today’s job market, according to a survey from IBM.
Beyond equipping kids to think outside the box, participation in the arts at school helps boost a young person’s overall academic achievement and social engagement skills. Students score more than 20 percent higher on math and English tests, have better attendance records, lower dropout rates, and are more than twice as likely to graduate from college than their peers without similar access to the arts.
Research tells us all of this and more. Yet today, less than half of California’s students are engaged in the arts at school. And our young people who need the social and academic benefits of arts instruction the most — low-income students, English-language learners — are the ones most likely to be denied access.
That’s where you, as a taxpaying adult, come in.
Between now and April 15, make a donation of $1 or more to the Keep Arts in Schools Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund, found in the Contribution section of your individual state tax-return form. One hundred percent of your tax-deductible contribution is applied to arts education programming supported by the California Arts Council.
Help make great memories for today’s students, and help them become tomorrow’s innovators. Every dollar counts. Here’s how to donate and spread the word.
The mission of the California Arts Council, a state agency, is to advance California through the arts and creativity. Learn more at arts.ca.gov.
