Create CA

Other programs: In 2024, Create CA completed its sixth year of implementing a statewide public will campaign to influence decision-makers and increase access and participation in the arts. The ultimate goal is to uplift the importance of arts education and make our work digestible to a general audience unfamiliar with education policy or the legislative process. This will grow our community of supporters and diversify our fundraising by attracting new donors. This multi-pronged strategy includes the creation and dissemination of resources to advocates and the general public, regular media outreach, translating our website and resources into Spanish, and implementing ad buys to increase Create CA's visibility and uplift the conversation around arts education. We also host convenings, and in 2024 our policy team brought together government representatives, statewide agencies, nonprofit arts organizations, school administrators and arts advocates for a meeting in Sacramento to discuss the greatest barriers to arts education access. We ended 2024 with 24,608 newsletter subscribers and 20,702 followers across social media platforms. Create CA's Top Five Program Accomplishments 1 . Create CA was a lead partner in the development and dissemination of a Prop 28 toolkit that includes sample school budgets, a community feedback template, and ten Local Education Agency (LEA) profiles to highlight promising practices for school districts as they expand their curriculum to provide increased arts access for students. 2.Create CA's 34 virtual and in-person events - training sessions, workshops and meetups - served 2,776 advocates and provided tools and strategies to increase access to and participation in arts education. 3.Our policy team hosted 17 representatives from statewide organizations at a convening in Sacramento in October 2024, where they came together to discuss and identify strategies to improve Proposition 28 implementation, arts education teacher recruitment, and overall access to arts education in California. 4.Create CA hosted the third annual Student Arts Advocacy Day at the California Institute for the Arts, which provided arts advocacy workshops to 514 current high school students from across the state. 5.Create CA launched the Youth Advisory Council, which is providing civic engagement opportunities and nonprofit management training to 10 young people between the ages of 16 and 24. It's also ensuring that Create CA incorporates youth perspectives into our program design and policy strategy.

Arts Now: Create CA's Arts Now program offers professional development and coalition building to arts advocates across California. The program offers synchronous and asynchronous training for Arts Now participants, allowing them the flexibility to fit the program into their schedules. Arts Now adapted to meet the changing needs of local organizers following the passage of Proposition 28. The Arts Now Leadership Institute provided arts education advocacy training to 27 individuals across the state. We also hosted programs that reached a total of 315 individuals. The Arts Now Leadership grew slightly to serve 30 advocates for the 2024-2025 session. Our program team provides one-on-one technical assistance to participants outside of these group sessions. Program staff offered additional technical assistance to program participants working to understand how Prop 28 is rolling out in their communities. We continue to be pleased with the outcomes of our Arts Now Regional Hubs in both the Bay Area and Sacramento region. We are partnering again with Arts Education Alliance of the Bay Area and Friends of Sacramento Arts during the 2024-2025 school year. In the last year, Create CA has continued to grow its significant library of resources to support advocates working to ensure proper implementation of Prop 28. Tools and resources include social media posts and graphics, talking points, a school board presentation template and guidance, an op-ed template for local media sources, several fact sheets, and one-pagers in English and Spanish to spread information about Prop 28. In addition, we have updated the Contact Your School Leaders page three times, our one-click letter to school board members and superintendents of districts across the state. We share these resources in our monthly Arts Now Meetups, where we also host listening sessions and gather stories of successes and challenges in the implementation of Prop 28. In 2024, Create CA continued offering the Arts Now Organizational Partners program, which offers the Arts Now Leadership Institute and additional targeted programming to nonprofit organizations across the state. The goal is for these nonprofits to build their capacity to advocate for increased arts education programs in their communities and local school districts. In late 2024, Create CA accepted six organizations into the second cohort of the program.