Date of Award

2018

Document Type

MA Project - Restricted Access (SIA Only)

Project Type

MA Project - Business Plan

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Art Business

First Advisor

Stephan Pascher

Abstract

The El Paso Arts Foundation seeks to make the arts accessible, to all students residing in the city of El Paso. Currently the students that reside in the area, do not have access to some of the arts institutions in the city because their families work all day and the only time that they are able to visit are during school hours. Educators want to take their students on trips to cultural institutions, but due to poor funding the educators have to be cautious as to how they are to spend the little bit of funding they were given. Since the school districts are trying to rebound from the statewide public-school funding cuts of 2011, many don’t have the resources to provide their educators with field trip opportunities.

The El Paso Arts Foundation understand the importance and impact that informal education has on grad school children. The foundation will week to provide the necessary funding to schools, that contain predominately low-income students, so that their educators can bring their students to the various organizations throughout the city. The vision that the El Paso Arts Foundation has is to give equal opportunity to low-income students, so that they have access to arts organizations and events in the city of El Paso. Ensuring that students, no matter their current socioeconomic status should have access to these art institutions is the motto that the foundation strives to achieve.

The foundation has two goals, 1) provide funding to art educators that teach in schools with predominately low-income students and 2) giving students in the El Paso a chance to visit art institutions outside the city like the Chinati Foundation.

Within the city of El Paso, most of the public-school districts have most of their students that come from low-income communities. Due to the high capacity of low-income students these school districts receive more state and federal funding than other school districts. State and federal funding is only eligible to be utilized for core academic subjects like math, science, and English. El Paso Arts Foundation strives to ensure that all students especially from low-income communities have the chance and experience of attending arts institutions and events which will greatly improve their academic success as well as social etiquette.

The Chinati Foundation, established by renowned artist Donald Judd, created a space where his art could be experienced the way that he intended it to be seen. Judd wanted to create a space where the visitors could be transported to another dimension. This idea of transportation is at the core of the El Paso Arts Foundation, taking the students out of their normal settings and placing them in a new and different environment where they have to explore what they are looking at and how it is impacting their experience. The Chinati Program will take 50 high school students from the city of El Paso to Marfa, Texas which is a short three hour bus ride, and provide them with a private tour of the Chinati grounds.

This strategic plan will encompass the first five years of the foundation, with a focus on the first two programs that the foundation seeks to establish in the city. After the success of the first two programs in the first five years, the foundation seeks to expand their programing to involve There are programs that will be created after the initial five years, which will include an emerging artist engagement program as well as the possibility of expanding the funding not to just art educators but to encompass the entirety of the arts, music, theater, and dance.

Download

Share

COinS