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The first community school of the arts in the United States was established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1892 at Chicago’s Hull House to help children of needy immigrants. Students were taught "by a thoroughly qualified teacher for a sum which does not force both parent and child to cheat the body in order to nourish the mind." The difference between the fee paid by the pupil and the cost of the lesson was covered by the school. This concept soon spread to other settlement houses across the nation and led, in 1937, to the formation of the National Guild of Community Music Schools with the purpose of “meeting the need of concerted action in focusing attention on the nature and purpose of community music schools."
Following its incorporation in New York in 1954, the national office of the Guild was established by Dr. Herbert Zipper in 1967 with a series of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Seven years later, in 1974, the organization decided to change its name to reflect the growth of multi-disciplinary arts programs at its schools, thus bringing into being the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. In the mid-seventies the Guild moved into its own offices at the Flatiron Building in New York with Marcy Horwitz as executive director. It remained there until August 1981 when it faced a crisis due to the resignations of the board president and executive director, and loss of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). These circumstances resulted in the offices being moved to New Jersey, the election of a new board president and the hiring of Lolita Mayadas as new executive director.
The Guild experienced a significant level of growth in the eighties and nineties, attracting increasing respect and national attention for the field. Over that period, the number of member institutions grew from 63 to 303 and the number of states in which these schools were located increased from 16 to 44. In addition, the field itself continued to experience unprecedented levels of expansion and change with the founding of new schools and the evolution of new community school and the evolution of new community school models contained within departments of colleges and universities and divisions of social service agencies, orchestras, parks and recreations and other umbrella organizations. The budgets of these schools also expanded as they developed increasingly complex programs and services to serve the diverse needs of their communities, including partnerships with public schools, arts organizations and other local agencies.
By 1989, the Guild’s budget had increased significantly, training programs had been developed, support staff hired and funding restored by the NEA. In 1991, a national study was carried out by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund which subsequently made two consecutive, three-year grants totaling $1.27 million to the National Guild for GuildTech, a multi-year program to strengthen the capacity of constituent institutions. The Fund also awarded $7.7 million to 23 community schools for faculty development and financial aid. These developments were followed in 1995 with the first Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the Guild’s New Arts Schools and Centers (NASCENT) program which provided seed grants, training and technical assistance to support the start-up of new schools in underserved locations.
The cumulative impact of these initiatives on the Guild and on the community school movement as a whole was considerable. Nearly 60% of the Guild’s members had participated in GuildTech, more than 30 new schools had been established and the Guild’s own ability to strengthen the capacity of its schools had been immeasurably strengthened. The resulting recognition has also permanently changed the image and impact of the Guild. From being a little-known entity, the association is now accepted as the acknowledged leader of the field, an outcome which has led to the development of major new national initiatives and partnerships.
These include Partners in Excellence, a national initiative to identify and promote the most effective practices in exemplary K-12 public school arts partnerships as well as Creative Communities, a $4.65 million, multi-year collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Creative Communities, which provides arts instruction by community schools for children and youth in public housing, was launched in 2001 as the first Challenge America Initiative by the NEA.
Following the retirement in 2001 of Lolita Mayadas, the Guild’s offices moved back to New York and in 2004, the Board hired long-time Associate Director, Jonathan Herman as Executive Director.
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