Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education engages students, inspires teachers, and demonstrates impact by weaving visual, digital, and performing arts into classrooms across Chicago.

What Sets CAPE Apart

Our unique approach to engaging students, inspiring teachers, and demonstrating impact relies on three strategies: Partnerships, Arts Integration, and Research.

Partnerships

To bring traditional subjects to life through the arts, we pair professional teaching artists with Chicago Public Schools teachers for long-term classroom partnerships and training.

Arts Integration

To spark students’ passion for learning, we weave visual and digital art, music, theater, and dance into traditional subjects like science, math, history, and language arts.

Research

CAPE works with external researchers to determine the impact of our programs on students, teachers, and artists. This helps us refine our own work and that of our teaching teams and contribute new knowledge to the field

Partnerships

To bring traditional subjects to life through the arts, we pair professional teaching artists with Chicago Public Schools teachers for long-term classroom partnerships and training.

Arts Integration

To spark students’ passion for learning, we weave visual and digital art, music, theater, and dance into traditional subjects like science, math, history, and language arts.

Research

CAPE’s Impact

Research has shown that CAPE’s programs improve students’ critical thinking, creative problem solving, and self confidence, and leads to higher achievement in the classroom and on standardized tests.

Learn More About the Importance of Art in Education

CAPE by the Numbers

CAPE teachers and teaching artists spent 13,436 hours learning, teaching, and growing in 2018-19.

Last school year, CAPE’s programs reached more than 4,258 students in Chicagoland schools.

More than 110 classroom teachers are currently receiving training, support, and materials from CAPE.

60 professional teaching artists currently traverse Chicago to bring creative inspiration to CAPE students and teachers.

Stories and Updates

Christmas Vibes from Telpochcalli

Here's a little soundtrack for your Christmas holiday! This Christmas track was created by students in 3-6th grade at Telpochcalli Elementary, as part of their After School program project...

Youth Music Exchange #2: Old Town School of Folk Music and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra

As part of the second Youth Music Exchange event, a DCASE initiative for the Year of Chicago Music curated by CAPE, classes from the Old Town School of Folk Music (OTS) and Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra...

Weaving and Community at New Sullivan Elementary

Early in the COVID-19 school shutdowns, one second grade class at New Sullivan Elementary made the shift from in-person to online learning, while continuing to explore weaving and community-...