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

“If the Coronavirus Was A Person I Would Beat It Up” Or, Meditations on the Loss of Co-Presence in Learning

The following is a beautiful essay by Sonja Moser, a CAPE teaching artist and professional theatre artist. In writing, Sonia reflects on her CAPE After School classroom at Waters...

Summer 2020 in Review

A global pandemic and city-wide school closures didn't stop our arts partnerships back in the spring, and they didn't stop our programs for Summer 2020, either! Between classes for...

Youth Music Exchange #1: Puerto Rican Arts Alliance + A Flor De Piel

As part of the first Year of Chicago Music - Youth Music Exchange event, the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance (PRAA) and A Flor De Piel met via Google Meets on Friday, August 14th, to perform...