Taft Museum of Art
316 Pike Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
Education Program for Students, Youth and Families
The Taft Museum of Art (TMA) supports high-impact educational programs that benefit children and families for the academic year 2022/2023. The overarching goal of education programming is to provide educational opportunities for diverse audiences by building relationships with scholars, artists, teachers, and other cultural organizations.Education programs address the need to provide arts and arts-integrated experiences for youth in the Greater Cincinnati area. For 2022/2023, TMA will continue its high-quality school programs designed as flexible formats to fit the circumstances that cultural arts organizations and schools are still experiencing due to the Coronavirus. Education programs include youth and family workshops, Family Funday, and Family Museum Experiences.
Program Goals:
For 2022/2023 the Taft set a goal to reach 2,175 children, youth, and students through its school, youth, and family programming and outreach. The goals for each individual program are as follows:
1. Artists Reaching Classrooms (ARC): The Taft set a goal of partnering with 12 schools and 15 students per classroom for a total of 180 students reached. When surveyed, 75% of students will report that they learned something new about art and art careers.
2. Art for All (AFA): The Taft set a goal of partnering with 5-8 underserved schools from the Cincinnati area, reaching 450 students. 85% of teachers will report that students learning was enhanced and will agree that AFA exposed their students to valuable arts experiences.
3. School Experience Tours: The Taft set a goal of reaching 600 students. 85% of students will indicate that they learned something new. 85% of teachers will indicate students made connections between art and other subjects.
4. Summer Art Camp: The goal for summer 2023 is to execute five grade-specific summer camp programs with a goal to reach a total of 90 children. 90% of campers and caregivers will agree that Art Camp was a valuable experience.
5. Family Funday: The Taft set a goal to reach 600 youth and their family members. 85% of families will indicate that activities encouraged learning and positive family interactions.
6. Family Museum Experiences (now titled Create and Play): The Taft set a goal to reach 90 youth and their family members. 85% of caregivers and children will report that they felt welcomed in a museum setting.
7. Youth and Family Workshops and Outreach: The Taft set a goal to reach 165 children through its outreach and workshop programs. 70% of participants will indicate they learned something new and felt inspired by the project.
Program Results:
In FY 2023, the Taft exceeded its overall goal, engaging 3,385 individuals in the arts in a variety of ways through this programming.
1. Artist Reaching Classrooms (ARC)
2. Art for All (AFA) provided underserved schools and students with multitouch experience with art and artmaking activities. Over the past year, the AFA program brought artistic experiences to a total of 10 classes of students at 6 different schools in Cincinnati, allowing nearly 650 students across the region to engage with the Taft Museum and its collection and exhibitions, as well as to engage with the act of creating art.
3. School Experience Tours
In the past year, the Taft is thrilled to have reached over 1,300 students this year, over double the original goal.
4. Summer Art Camp
TheTaft held 6 week-long camp sessions for all age groups from Pre-K through high school, with a total of 115 kids and teenagers in attendance.
5. Family Funday
Through Family Funday, families participated in intergenerational gallery and art-making experiences, with activities encouraging learning and positive family interactions. The 2 Family Funday events held in the past year had a total attendance of over 200.
6. Family Museum Experiences (Create and Play)
Through the newly reintroduced Create and Play program, modeled after the pre-pandemic Taft Jr. program for family museum experiences, the Taft introduced children aged 3-6 to a museum setting and engaged them in art-making activities with their caregivers, striving to make families feel welcomed in a museum setting. Create and Play began in March and has had monthly events since, with a total attendance to-date of 46 kids and family members.
7. Youth and Family Workshops and Outreach
Between workshops and partnerships with other local non-profit organizations, the Taft was a part of 16 outreach events and visits, with a total of 616 participants.
As a whole, the programs for schools, kids, and families at the Taft Museum of Art were very successful. Most of the programs exceeded their initial attendance goals, with some significant gains made in a few. For example, through the further development of the School Experience tours and their different offerings, twice as many students than the museum hoped for were exposed to the art that the Taft has to offer and were given an opportunity to engage with art and with each other in a new and beneficial way. Additionally, by incorporating the Art for All-specific tours with the regular school tours, not only can the museum take advantage of pre-existing, successful content in other areas of its programming, but it can secure further stability for the AFA program.
Although the world continues to transition to more in-person activities following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Taft, much like many arts and cultural organizations, has faced challenges in rebuilding to pre-pandemic levels of attendance. While some programs were sustained throughout the pandemic and have continued to grow since, a couple of the newly refined and reintroduced programs did not quite meet their attendance goals. It took time to develop the programs and begin presenting them at a more regular frequency, but their reintroduction was successful, and the Taft will continue to invest in these programs until they gain sustainability. Additionally, as the museum continues to set goals and strategies to increase visitor and program participant attendance, there will also remain a focus to shift importance from breadth of impact to depth of impact, particularly through the learning and outreach programming.
Website:
http://www.taftmuseum.org Amount: $50,000
Date: September 2022
