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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 made up 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.
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.
A period of unprecedented growth in the eighties resulted in a tripling of membership and brought increased national attention to the field. By 1989, the Guild’s budget had increased by nearly 400%, training programs had been developed, support staff hired and funding restored by the National Endowment for the Arts (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 development 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 across the country.
Today the National Guild serves a constituency of more than 600 community schools of the arts and a membership of 370 non-degree granting, nonprofit community arts education providers that:
- Serve more than 600,000 students in 45 states.
- Employ more than 15,000 teaching artists.
- Spend more than $200 million on annual operations.
- Offer instruction in one or more of the following disciplines: music (94%); visual arts and crafts (31%); dance (29%); theater/drama (28%); literary arts, (10%); media arts, (6%).
- Ensure arts instruction is accessible to all by setting affordable tuition fees and providing financial aid to students unable to pay.
- Partner with a diversity of organizations and agencies, including public schools, daycare centers and senior centers, in order to maximize their impact.
Although community schools are not primarily dedicated to the preparation of professionals, they count many celebrated artists amongst their alumni: Benny Goodman, Martha Graham, Joseph Gingold, Helen Hayes, Jaime Laredo, Dionne Warwick, Tatiana Troyanos, Alicia Keys, Savion Glover, Michael Tilson Thomas and Garrick Ohlsson, to name a few. And throughout its history, the philosophy of the community school movement has attracted the support and endorsement of prominent thinkers and artists such as Albert Einstein, Wilhelm Backhaus, Pablo Casals, Rosina Lhevinne, Efrem Zimbalist, and many others.
In sum, the broad aim of community schools is to produce culturally literate citizens for whom the arts are a natural and valued part of their lives.
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