Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area

CA Arts and Culture Summit and Arts Advocacy Day photo dump! We’re still riding the high of three beautifully packed days:
- Co-hosting the Arts Education pre-convening with and
- Bumping into friends and attending sessions at the Summit
- Advocating for arts and equitable, community-based arts education to our representatives

Thank you for putting together such a wonderful convening!

This Arts, Culture, and Creativity month we’re excited to see what grows following our Planting Seeds conference. In just one day we learned and exchanged so much thanks to our presenters. ✨🌱✨

1. Our morning plenary- facilitated by AEA Executive Director Dominique Enriquez - with City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Manager, Lyz Luke, artists José Cordón and Donte Clark, Create CA Program Director Ricky Abilez, and Grants for the Arts Director Kristen Jacobson

2. Kyle Holme, Director Statewide Arts Initiative, Prop 28 presentation

3. Sarah Brothers, Director of Arts Education, Santa Cruz Arts Council and Phyllis Hall, Director, ArtEsteem

4. Teaching Artist Re-mix working session. Facilitated by Rachel Schaffran (not pictured)

5. VAPA meeting with San Francisco Unified and Oakland Unified VAPA teams

6. Funders Forum with Sarah Lyding, Director at Music Man Foundation and Tom DeCaigny, Program Officer of Performing Arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

7. Kathya Lopez, Program Manager at Create CA presenting an Advocacy Toolkit

8. Rachelle Axel, sharing local advocacy efforts as Director of Arts for a Better Bay Area

Planting Seeds 2026: Art, Community, Connection, Joy, and Conversation. ✨🌱✨

We gathered 150 practitioners across 28 cities in the Bay Area including artists, teachers, teaching artists, administrators, community organizations, funders, and advocates.

Thank you to for hosting us - providing a beautiful backdrop for our panel and sessions throughout the day.

And thank you to our panelists and collaborators for sharing their work and wisdom. We’re looking forward to seeing what continues to grow in the weeks and months ahead.

SPEAKERS ANNOUNCED! Join us Thurs, March 26 for Planting Seeds. Link in bio.

CHECK YOUR INBOX: After continued dialogue and collaboration we’re excited to announce Planting Seeds: AEA’s community centered arts education mini-conference. Please join us March 26 at the Oakland Museum of California. Link in bio.

Check your inbox! Our Community Planning re-cap and list of upcoming programs and events just dropped!
Not on our e-news list? Link in bio to sign up and stay in the know for all things Arts Ed.

Register today for our Sept 4 Community Planning Session. Kick off the new school year with us - You’ll get a chance hear from arts leads, connect with peers and give feedback to inform our programs for the year.
Link in bio.

Excited to partner with SFUSD’s Arts Department to present over 40 Community Arts Partners at the SFUSD Administrator’s Meeting.

Arts partners have the opportunity to share their programs and resources to 500+ SFUSD administrators.

is calling on the community to fight budget cuts to the arts in Oakland’s city budget. Many of our own arts education partners and programs are directly impacted by these cuts.

Reposting call to action. A big thank you to them for distilling this info to help spread the word.

Scroll through to learn direct ways to support.

Join us today!