Helping young people connect with life through art

Karina Bland is away. This column first appeared Oct. 7, 2018:

Art teacher Candace Greene watches the fifth-graders walk into the Phoenix Art Museum and waits for the moment when their mouths fall open in wonder.

It’s her favorite part of taking her students from Sevilla West Elementary School in Phoenix on field trips. For many, it is the first time they have been to a museum.

It is one thing to see a photograph of a painting or a sculpture, Greene said, another to stand in front of it and see the brush strokes or the curve of the metal.

So much of what students see of the world is on a screen, said Greene, a teacher for 17 years.

“We don’t make real connections until we see something in real life,” she said.

But when school budgets are tight, art often is the first subject to go and field trips right along with it. A recent study showed that although 82 percent of Arizona students have some arts instruction, only 65 percent get art and music as required by state standards.

The highest proportion of students without access to any arts were in lowincome communities. So in 2011, Russ and Mac Perlich founded the Act One Field Trip Program, a small nonprofit that pays for admission, transportation and study materials.

That first year, they sent 6,000 students on field trips, including 200 kindergarteners to see “Dora the Explorer” at Valley Youth Theatre.

This year, over 47,000 students in low-income communities in Phoenix and Tucson will go to museums, plays, dance performances and the symphony.

At the museums, Greene’s students keep their hands to themselves and their voices low. They ask the docents thoughtful questions.

This year, students at Greene’s school will take nine field trips paid for by Act One.

“I want them to know these are accessible places for them. These are not places for someone else,” she said. “They belong there, too.”