The Young Audiences Arts for Learning network includes 30 affiliates throughout the United States.  Our affiliates provide performance-demonstrations, workshops and residency programs in all the arts disciplines:  music, dance, visual arts, theater and the literary arts.  YA programs are integrated into school curricula and meet state and local standards.

Young Audiences Arts for Learning affiliates provide schools and communities with in-school, after-school, summer and family programs. YA programs take place in schools, libraries, community centers, hospitals, camps and parks. YA programs reach children with special needs and children at risk.

As a nation-wide, not-for profit network of professional artists and arts-in-education specialists, Young Audiences Arts for Learning is a resource and partner to any school committed to using the arts to improve teaching and learning.  Each year, YA artists reach over seven million students in the inner cities, suburbs and rural areas, from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Young Audiences Arts for Learning affiliates:
• Audition and accredit roster artists
• Train the next generation of teaching artists
• Produce arts-in-education programs to the highest standards
• Provide teachers with learning resources and professional development
• Create community-wide programs
 

Programs and Services
Young Audiences Arts for Learning affiliates offer three types of programs:  performance-demonstrations, workshops and residencies.  affiliates also provide professional development and training for teachers.
 
Performance Programs
Young Audiences Arts for Learning performance programs provide an effective means of introducing children to the performing arts.  Unlike traditional concert programs, YA performance programs combine compelling examples of the discipline--music, dance, theater, the fine and literary arts--with demonstration segments that focus on particular aspects of the art.  The length of a typical performance program is 40-45 minutes for an audience of 100-300 students.

Young Audiences Arts for Learning approaches these programs as the first in a series of potentially recurrent encounters involving artists and children.  Expanding audience awareness and deepening their experience of art as a unique means of communicating ideas and feelings are its distinguishing characteristics. By accenting the definitive qualities of an art, YA performances lead youngsters to both keener understanding and delight.  
 
Workshops
Young Audiences Arts for Learning workshops allow artists to work with a small group of children more closely. Workshops offer an opportunity for each child to receive individual attention from a trained teaching artist.  Demonstration and participation provide the children with paths of creative choice in making and understanding art.  Somewhere along the way they discard the notions that art lacks discipline or that it’s done by formula or rote.  Access to the arts is through a creator, interpreter and companion in the work--the artist who poses problems for children to solve and exercises in which they can join.  The distinguishing characteristic of the workshop program is that every child is able to participate actively in the creative choices that define and distinguish the arts. 

Residencies
As school and private funding sources permit, Young Audiences Arts for Learning affiliates have combined performance and workshop programs to create a wide variety of residencies. Residencies may extend from one day to an entire semester. Subject areas are diverse:  master classes for student instrumentalists; special workshops for the gifted and the handicapped; interdisciplinary projects culminating in student/teacher/artist presentations. The unifying ideas and sequential experience of the residency heighten the impact of performances and workshops and connect the artist’s work with the ongoing life of the school community.

Professional Development
Young Audiences Arts for Learning program staff and teaching artists conduct professional
development workshops for teachers tailored to meet the particular needs of an individual school or an entire school district.  By participating in professional development sessions in the arts, teachers can explore new method of reaching students.  Together teachers and artists develop new teaching skills, learn new ways to apply the arts to classroom lessons and explore new approaches to  engage students with different learning abilities. 

Affiliate Program Brochures and Information
Each affiliate publishes an annual program catalog with program descriptions and information on their artists/ensembles. Many of these are available on-line. Click here to go the "Where We Are" section. Then in the list under the map, click on the name of the YA affiliate in your community to go to their website or call for more information.