The National Arts & Learning Collaborative and the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education (MAAE) receive grant from The Boston Foundation

In partnership with the MAAE, the National Arts & Learning Collaborative(NALC) has received nearly $100,000 for the first year of a two-year grant from The Boston Foundation (TBF) and an anonymous partner foundation as part of TBF’s Arts Service Organization Funding Initiative.

TBF's Arts Service Organization Funding Initiative was designed to strengthen the management capacity of Greater Boston’s arts service organizations, in particular by bringing organizations together that can share common services or functions, thus releasing more time and money to go directly to serve the mission of each organization. In creating this partnership, NALC and MAAE will expand services and constituencies, and will continue to support arts in education in the Commonwealth.

“This is the result we hoped to see when we created this funding initiative,” said Paul S. Grogan, President and CEO of the Boston Foundation. “Without compromising either organization’s mission, we now have two groups better able to serve their clients—and everyone comes out ahead.”

NALC and MAAE will collaborate on arts in education needs assessments, developing advocacy resources, and programming including a spring 2007 conference and a June 2007 arts education awards ceremony. MAAE will also be featured in NALC's Arts & Learning Review. MAAE has moved to the NALC office on the campus of the Walnut Hill School in Natick, and the organizations have merged a range of back office systems.

NALC and MAAE have developed a shared mission for the partnership: Together Supporting Arts in Learning.

NALC Executive Director Meredith Eppel Jylkka commented that the partnership will, "enable NALC to broaden its constituency to serve more arts educators in the state through our programs, and will also provide NALC with a link to the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C., in accordance with the organization's national perspective."

The long term benefits of the partnership will be:
• Children who are better prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st century at work, at home, and in the community, due to engagement in sequential, comprehensive arts education.
• An expanded network of individual and organizations fluent in arts in education issues that can be called upon to support arts education policies at the state level.
• An alliance adept at building support for and providing arts in education programs in communities across Massachusetts.

Click here for more information on MAAE. MAAE’s mission is to provide arts for every student in the state.

Click here for the May 2006 press release.