Education Showcase

Join us as we showcase young dancers and musicians from several of Santa Fe’s youth arts organizations, including the Santa Fe Youth Symphony, the Nacha Mendez Music Scholarship, Moving Arts Española, and the New Mexico School for the Arts.

Hosted by New Mexico School for the Arts and organized by NMSA and the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association, this free performance will offer something for the whole family, highlighting the important work that each of these organizations does to engage the community!

Healthy snacks for this event provided by Santa Fe Natural Grocers.

Education and Community Engagement

We believe the arts are essential. They teach students valuable lessons, like: practice makes perfect, small differences can have large effects, collaboration leads to creativity. The arts create multiple pathways to problem solving, and they teach that all problems have more than one solution.

Research shown the benefits of arts education on performance and culture—especially student motivation, attitudes, and attendance. Numerous reports discuss the ways that increased access and involvement in arts education encourage students to stay in school, excel in school, succeed in life, and do well later in life at work.

And yet, despite the impressive benefits of arts access and education, not all people have access to these quality experiences. 

Performing arts organizations across New Mexico (many of which are participating in Art + Sol) work every day to enrich the lives of our residents. Many companies offer free tickets for students or free family performances. Others offer 1:1 mentorship free of charge. Across Santa Fe, one can always find free, quality arts programming intended to engage community members. 

Each of us has more work to do. The Art + Sol Festival is committed to advancing the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access for all Santa Feans. We will work to expand access for Festival offerings. We invite all community members to participate in the Festival and let us know how we can do better.

The City of Santa Fe Arts & Culture Department said it best: 

“Culture embodies the shared complex and diverse heritage of a community, including its tangible and intangible virtues…It is the quiet and restless imagination that becomes an expression, from which emanates writing, song, performance, painting, sculpture, cuisine, dance, design, and story. When recognized, coalesced, and leveraged, culture is transformative. It ignites creativity, consciousness, and capacity.”