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Q&A
Ensuring equitable access to arts education and tracking program success
1:17:47
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145 sec
Council Member Rivera and Audrey St. Clair discuss efforts to ensure equitable access to arts education for students from underserved neighborhoods and methods for tracking participation and success of CDF-funded programs.
- DCLA uses an equity fund to support organizations operating in areas with low median incomes and high poverty rates
- The CASA program allows council members to make designations in their communities, ensuring funds reach deep into NYC neighborhoods
- DCLA collects final reports from grantees to evaluate the success and effectiveness of their programming
- The department relies on grantee data to provide insight for future CDF application cycles
- DCLA is open to discussing the creation of a specific arts and education grant-making stream
Carlina Rivera
1:17:47
How do you ensure that students from underserved neighborhoods have equitable access to the arts?
Audrey St. Clair
1:17:53
So again, through the equity fund, really having our arts and cultural organizations steward high quality, robust experiences for children in low income communities.
1:18:07
It is a great way that we enable and steward our arts and cultural partners to really be experts in terms of what their target audience needs, including the students, families, and communities, and their own neighborhoods.
Carlina Rivera
1:18:23
And what metrics do you use to track participation in and the success of the arts education program that you fund through CDF, and do you compile data from across the grants you fund to take a broader look at participation and success of the CDF grant making?
Audrey St. Clair
1:18:42
Yes.
1:18:42
So every year we do collect final reports from our grantees to evaluate the overall success and effectiveness of their programming, particularly with the audiences that they serve, And because we rely on our arts and educational partners to best know their constituents in education, we certainly rely on that data to provide insight to the CDF for the following application cycle.
Carlina Rivera
1:19:13
And how do you track school partnerships funded by the cultural institutions group allocations, CDF grant making, and any other DCLA funded or DCLA administered initiatives, and also have you considered an arts and education grant making stream?
Audrey St. Clair
1:19:32
So we continue to rely on our end of year reports to glean data in terms of the effectiveness of arts educational experiences through the CDF.
1:19:43
And in terms of an arts and education program funneled through the CDF, that is certainly something that we'd be happy to discuss and partner with you, as well as our friends and colleagues at the DOE in order to explore in the future.
Lance Polivy
1:19:58
And as for CIGs, we've been so proud to partner with you, Councilmember Rivera, on what reporting looks like for our CIGs in terms of their CASA and initiative funding, and so those final reports come in to our CIG unit as well.