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 has distributed 2,897 art supply kits to Chicago families since the pandemic began.

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

CAPE A/RP in 2021-2022

By: Brandon Phouybanhdyt and Mark A. Diaz CAPE is honored to announce the collaborating schools taking part in the Artist/Researcher Partners program for the 2021–2022 school year. This year we...

What is Adult Life After North-Grand High School?

Last year, North-Grand High School's teacher, Kristina Bowlus, and CAPE teaching artist Jennifer Mannebach quickly adapted their skills when they learned that the 2020–2021 school year would be completely...

21st Century Primary Center Students Find Nature at Home

Last year, our kindergarten, first, second and fourth graders at 21st Century Primary Center in Park Forest, Illinois, got the opportunity to design, discover, and play sounds at home....