ArtReach Celebrates 10 Years With 5th Annual Party ARTy Benefit

ArtReach, a nonprofit aimed at increasing access to visual arts education to K-6 schools throughout San Diego County, hosted the 5^th Annual Party ARTy on Sunday, October 22, 2017 at a private home in Rancho Santa Fe. ArtReach celebrated 10 years of the ArtReach Access to Art program, which takes high quality visual art lessons to San Diego County elementary schools that do not have arts education as a part of their normal school curriculum.

Photo by: Olive Creative Strategies, Inc

The event featured festive cirque entertainment provided by Sophia Isadora Academy of Circus Arts, fine cuisine and wine, live music and art exhibits from local artists. Local band, The Trojan Rocksteady Boxsets, provided live entertainment along with festive cuisine from Coast Catering. Proceeds from the event will benefit ArtReach’s mission to bring free or low cost visual arts education programs into San Diego County schools that would otherwise have none.

“We’re excited beyond words to be celebrating 10 years of bringing free art programs to schools in San Diego and even across the country,” said Theresa Fox, executive director at ArtReach. “Party ARTy is a celebration of art, creativity and our goal of giving children access to both.”

Party ARTy featured the works of Australian artist Sonny King, as well as AkZhana and Ellen Dieter who painted live at the event. Guests had the opportunity to see each work emerge and then had the chance to bid on the one-of-a-kind original pieces by these artists. The silent auction featured a stay at a Park City condominium valued at $5,000, two tickets with table seating for the sold out B-52s concert at Belly Up on November 2, Disneyland passes and much more.

Party ARTy celebrated 10 years of connecting with students in elementary schools throughout San Diego County to provide hands on sequential, standards-based visual arts education taught by local artists. Since 2008, the Free Workshop Program has motivated more than 19,000 students in 96 schools to create over 60,000 pieces of original work. In the 2016-2017 school year alone, the ArtReach team worked in 14 schools spanning the county via the free program, and six more schools with fee-based programs.

Photo by: Olive Creative Strategies, Inc

Professional artists teach sequential, standards-based lessons with the intention of helping every student practice creative problem solving while learning art skills. Fundraising via grants, events and individual donors supports the Free Workshop Program that ArtReach offers to Title I schools with no existing art instruction and no means to pay. School budget cuts over the past several years make the need for ArtReach programming and donations greater than ever.

ArtReach has partnered with organizations like Knockaround, a local sunglasses company, to fund its programs such as the Access to Art program. This year, ArtReach partnered with Knockaround for the fourth year in a row to bring Class Acts, a hands-on design challenge to fourth and fifth graders in San Diego County Elementary schools. Students from Ramona Elementary and Iftin Charter School learned about the design process and then had the opportunity to draw and design their own pair of sunglasses.

One student’s design was chosen by Kockaround to be manufactured and sold, resulting in $25,000 in sales to benefit the free ArtReach program, Access to Art. Each guest at Party ARTy received a pair of Knockaround sunglasses.

Photo by: Olive Creative Strategies, Inc

Proceeds from this year’s Party ARTy event will continue to support the programs that bring arts into San Diego schools. Opportunities to support ArtReach and the students that benefit from the programs are available year-round through donations, partnerships and sponsorships. To learn more about how to sponsor a school that would benefit from visual arts programs or to find more information about ArtReach, visit www.artreachsandiego.org.