With support from the California Arts Council, Turnaround Arts: California will work with 20 elementary and middle schools in underserved communities, providing training and resources to help educators integrate the arts into every classroom and across the broader school environment, building engagement and access to learning for all students.
Turnaround Arts: California’s programming is community-driven, culturally responsive, and focused on long-term sustainable school transformation through the arts. Our statewide network brings artists and arts organizations together with our partner schools to leverage and develop our collective expertise in arts education and arts integration. Together we cross-pollinate learnings, ideas, and data to move forward a new vision for public education across California.
Our core community arts programs and services include:
Retreats and Convenings: Network-wide convenings for principals, teachers, teaching artists, and arts organizations provide time for exchange around challenges and successes in advancing equity through the arts in public schools, while supporting strategic arts planning and arts-based professional development.
Coaching: Our coaching program, in partnership with our network of arts organizations, helps principals and teachers build their knowledge of arts integration, strengthen their leadership through the arts, align the arts to meet school district priorities, and become effective advocates for equity.
Professional Development: Professional development workshops provide teachers, principals, and teaching artists/arts organizations with strategies – centered in culturally responsive teaching and learning practices – they can immediately implement at school sites.
Arts Integration Lesson Labs: Lesson Labs bring together partnering teachers and teaching artists/arts organizations to study new instructional strategies, and design, implement, and evaluate lesson plans that integrate arts standards with subjects such as math and science.
Support for Special Projects & In-kind Supplies: We provide flexible funding, in-kind supplies, and strategy support to help partner schools and arts organizations collaborate to implement special projects at individual school sites such as artistic residencies, family art nights, community engagement projects, school musicals, arts-based field trips, additional professional development for teachers, etc.

