Together with the Kennedy Center, local arts organizations, and our coach partners, Turnaround Arts: California gathers Arts Leadership Teams from partner schools across the state annually to develop and deepen arts-rich action plans for school change.
A special thank you to our 2018 venue partners: The Broad Stage, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and Sunset Center.
Video: Sandra Selva
Music: www.bensound.com
Sierra Preparatory Academy in the Santa Ana Unified School District is one of 27 Turnaround Arts: California partner schools using the arts to fuel school change efforts. After visiting the school, Turnaround Artist Mark Ronson invited the school’s Jazz Band, under the direction of Susan Tory, to experience the recording process in a professional studio. Check out their rendition of Stand By Me!
Video by Wreesman Reels
Ellen Ochoa Learning Center is one of 27 Turnaround Arts: California partner schools using the arts to fuel school change efforts. Co-founder and Turnaround Artist Frank Gehry, architects from Gehry Partners, and California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon recently visited the school and encouraged middle school students to envision the future of their community through the arts.
Filmed by Sandra Selva
Edited by Jonathan Walls
A conversation with Faith Kwon from Ravenswood City School District’s Costaño Elementary School in East Palo Alto, CA.
Music: www.bensound.com
This fall, Turnaround Arts: California hosted Inside Out Project Group Actions to support our newest cohort of schools in making bold, visual statements about their commitment to leveraging the arts for educational equity. From our state’s southern border to our northern coast, first-year #TAcalifornia teams transformed campus walls into celebratory messages of creativity, community, and identity — bringing the magic of teaching and learning through the arts from the inside… out!
In 2014, Barton Elementary School in San Bernardino partnered with Turnaround Arts: California to use the arts as a tool for school change. This is their story.
Music: www.bensound.com
Video: Sandra Selva
Mary Chapa Academy partnered with Turnaround Arts: California in 2014, and their journey of school change through the arts is truly remarkable. Thank you to Nabil Abdulkadir for capturing their story!
Our Regional Coaches support schools in their implementation of the Turnaround Arts program, building teacher leadership to transform school climate, culture, and engagement through the arts.
To kick off the back-to-school season, they delivered treats to Turnaround Arts: California schools across the state. Keep scrolling to learn more about some of them!
Create Humboldt and North Coast Arts Integration Project| Northern California
J. Mimi Dojka
I am an arts education consultant for Create Humboldt and local public schools and non-profit arts organizations. As a Turnaround Arts: California Regional Coach I I support two new Turnaround Arts: California Schools, Pine Hill Elementary and South Bay Elementary, located in Eureka, California. I also form collaborative partnerships between our schools and community-based arts institutions, including the Morris Graves Museum of Art and the Humboldt State University Art Education program.
Sarah Peters
I am a project coordinator with North Coast Arts Integration Project and a Turnaround Arts: California Regional Coach. This new year, I am excited for the classroom teachers, staff, and parents, who will get to see their students in a whole new light through the arts!
P.S. ARTS| Los Angeles County
Darryl King
I am a Program Manager at P.S. ARTS. As a Turnaround Arts: California Regional Coach, I provide consistent on-site support for eight Turnaround Arts: California schools. My primary goal as a coach is to increase classroom teachers’ capacity to integrate arts content and instructional strategies in meaningful ways. I help teachers by delivering tailored professional development workshops on arts integration strategies in alignment with Common Core and providing explicit classroom modeling of whole school arts-based practices.
Sunset Center| Central California
Margo Mullen
I work at the Sunset Cultural Center as the Community Engagement Manager and I am also the Turnaround Arts: California Regional Coach for the Central Coast schools!
We added 10 more elementary and middle schools to the #TAcalifornia family. Scroll down to learn about each one of them!
I am a public school kid from Long Beach, CA, double-majoring in Public Health and Dance. I am currently a Junior attending Tulane University through the Posse Foundation, which provided me with a leadership and merit-based full-tuition scholarship.
This summer I was lucky enough to be the Program Research Intern for Turnaround Arts: California thanks to the Getty Foundation Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program. Over the past 10 weeks, I’ve been collaborating with the program team to research local arts and cultural resources and create asset-maps for the different regions across California where Turnaround Arts: California schools are located.
I chose to intern with Turnaround Arts: California because I found unique parallels between public health and their work in arts integration within elementary and middle schools.
Public health programs seek to address a health issue by suggesting an intervention that is developed in collaboration with members of the program’s community. Similarly, Turnaround Arts: California seeks to empower historically marginalized and inadequately resourced elementary and middle schools by strategically leveraging the arts towards school-defined goals.
In fact, research shows that access to the arts improve health outcomes, and learning about arts education through this internship was a way I hoped to explore that connection.
The amount of faith the staff had in me! Yes, I had my individual work, but I was also invited from the very beginning to learn about the program, participate in conversations, and help out wherever I could. The staff was always open to answer any questions I had or to listen to my thoughts. They were eager to support and get to know me. It was empowering to be included like that.
Researching arts and cultural community assets was both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because I had a lot of flexibility with my own work — from searching for local organizations to deciding how to record and present my data. Plus, I got to learn a lot about some incredible arts communities and local arts education work being done across California. But, terrifying because the fear of failure or feelings of not having done enough can be daunting.
During our annual staff retreat, we had an intentional conversation about equity and anti-racism. I felt proud of being a part of a team who sees value in dialogue and understands how race and class impact ourselves as individuals, the work we’re doing, and the people we’re serving. Getting to participate in the first of many discussions about that was very special to me, and I’m so excited for them to continue that work.
Manage your expectations.
(An important reminder for those of us who tend to be overambitious when setting them.)
Shout out to Barbara, Angela, Heather, and Jacob! They are all incredible, and I will miss working with all of them. And, best of luck to our new Turnaround Arts: California schools — I’m so excited for you all to join the family and continue growing through the arts!