History

The beginning

The Atlanta Partnership for Arts in Learning (APAL) was founded in 2000 by Atlanta educators, artists, and community members. Founding stakeholders included actress Jane Fonda, executive director of the Center for Urban Education at GSU Dr. Lisa Delpit, and poet Alice Lovelace.

The vision was for APAL to create arts infusion partnerships between teachers and artists in the Atlanta community. APAL's arts infusion method paired a teacher, or group of teachers, with a respected APAL artist, and together they created lesson plans that allowed students to engage deeply with the subject matters. These teacher-artist partnerships then would explore using arts infusion in their classrooms. The projects played with science through theater, danced to an understanding of math, and sculpted a structure into history. By bringing arts into the classroom, into the learning experience, APAL offered teachers, students, and artists new opportunities to grow and learn.

Over the course of four school years ('00/'01 to '03/'04), APAL funded and facilitated partnerships at Benteen Elementary School, John Hope Elementary School, Parkside Elementary School, Charles R. Drew Charter School, Renfroe Middle School, Walden Middle School, KIPP Academy, South Atlanta High School, Grady High School, and the Horizons School.

During that time, APAL also developed a professional development series with Atlanta Public Schools. The series was led by teachers and artists, who had previously developed APAL arts infusion partnerships. By sharing their knowledge and experience, these teachers and artists enabled their colleagues, who might never have an APAL partnership, to integrate arts infusion techniques into their classrooms.

The dormancy

In the spring of 2004, key leaders on the APAL Board of Directors stepped down. Soon after that, Alice Lovelace, the Executive Director and only staff member of APAL, announced her resignation as well. The remaining board members did not act quickly upon Alice's resignation, and the organization fell into a period of dormancy. All programming stopped from the fall of 2004 to the spring of 2006. By the winter of 2005, the remaining board members planned to disband the organization when the artists, who had worked to develop the reputation and programs of APAL, said, "No." The opportunities offered by APAL to the arts education community, to the children, of Atlanta were too important for the organization disappear.

New beginnings

The passion of the artists' statement convinced the board to turn over the organization to the artists. In the spring of 2006, APAL's Board of Directors became three master teaching artists in the Atlanta community - Jeff Mather, Celeste Miller, and Barry Stewart Mann. They were soon joined by Nicole Livieratos and Scott Painter. Jumping into action, the board called upon the expertise of Kathie deNobriga, arts education consultant, and Arnold Aprill of the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). They convened large stakeholder meetings to determine the necessary steps in getting APAL back on its feet. With money in the bank from previous fund raising efforts, the first step was to start programming again. 

 In the fall of 2006, after a two year period of dormancy, APAL returned to the metro Atlanta community funding three partnerships between teaching artists and educators at Grady High School, North Atlanta High School, and the Horizons School.