ArtistYear, the First National Organization Dedicated to Service Through the Arts, Receives $1.5 Million in Pennsylvania State AmeriCorps Recognition and Funding

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- ArtistYear, the recently-founded national service organization that enables artists to commit a year of service to their country, has been awarded $1.5 million in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania AmeriCorps funding over three years.  ArtistYear is the first national and state organization dedicated to service through the arts to receive recognition from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps and national volunteering initiatives. This 2018-2019 school year 55 ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellows will serve as full-time teaching artists alongside established educators in 51 federally-designated Title I schools, delivering over 93,000 hours of arts instruction to 11,000 non-duplicated students at least twice per-week. ArtistYear is nearly tripling its impact in Philadelphia with 34 Fellows in the School District of Philadelphia; doubling in Queens, NY with 16 Fellows in the New York City Department of Education's Queens School District; and continuing its commitment with 5 Fellows in the Roaring Fork Valley School District, Colorado, in partnership with the Aspen Music Festival and School.

ArtistYear's mission is to recruit, develop, and support higher-education arts graduates across artistic discipline to serve as dedicated teaching artists – ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellows—in Title 1 schools, to ensure every student experiencing poverty in America has arts education through a national service arts corps. Partnering with schools and Districts to make all schools "arts-rich" over time, ArtistYear's programming is designed to yield positive changes for students, schools, and the Fellows themselves.

"National service provides an opportunity to create shared cultural experiences for our citizens, giving us stake in and responsibility to one another, our communities, and our country," said ArtistYear Cofounder and CEO Margo Drakos. "We've found that pairing recent arts graduates—who want to use their art for good—with fantastic teachers in low-income schools, is an effective way to significantly increase the number of underserved students with access to the arts. ArtistYear is honored to provide artists with the chance to tackle big challenges facing our nation through a service year."

Full news release

2018-2019 ArtistYear AmeriCorps Fellow bios and school assignments

PRESS CONTACT:  
Margo Drakos, Cofounder & CEO, ArtistYear
[email protected]

SOURCE ArtistYear