Get Creative with Arts Grants

By Savannah Lira, Program and Communications Associate

PVF’s Visiting Artist in the Classroom Grant program offers $500 grants for teachers to invite artists or art historians to visit their classrooms and lead fun, hands-on art projects. This program can include painters, sculptors, wood carvers, weavers, musicians, dancers, and actors, among others. Teachers often come up with creative requests that we love and want to share – like the Alameda Community Learning Center!

The Alameda Community Learning Center was awarded a Visiting Artist grant to invite a graffiti artist, rap/spoken word lyricist and a Hip Hop/Rap historian to work with their 6th-12th grade students.

Marlon Richardson, the Education Director at Hip Hop for Change and and a prominent teaching artist in the Bay Area, presents and leads classes on EmCeeing/Rapping, Beat Making, DJ’ing and the history of Hip Hop.

Along with break-dancing lessons and a rap class, students learned how to design their own graffiti art. Check out the pictures below for the end results!

Made possible with funding by the Geballe Family, this program is working to fill a large need and makes a difference in the number of students who receive inspirational, quality arts education. Interactive workshops from professional artists in the community are motivating to students and increase both student and teacher morale.