What is The Creative Advantage?

The Creative Advantage is part of Seattle Public Schools Visual and Performing Arts Program. The purpose of the Creative Advantage is to establish equitable access to high-quality arts education for every student in Seattle Public Schools. We do this through a collective impact partnership with Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Seattle Foundation, and community arts partners.

To learn more about our history, how we’re closing arts access gaps, and how we’re providing resources to schools, visit our shared website: The Creative Advantage.

---

History and Progress

The Creative Advantage History

Equitable access to arts instruction is our mission in The Creative Advantage. It is an essential component of educating well-rounded students and preparing them for college, career, and life in the 21st century. Since 2007, Seattle Public Schools and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture have collaborated to increase student access to arts education in historically underserved schools. In 2011, the foundation of The Creative Advantage initiative was set through a generous $1M grant from the Wallace Foundation to develop a plan and outline strategies for SPS to provide high quality arts education equitably across the district.

In 2012, Seattle Public Schools conducted a needs assessment and learned that there were significant barriers facing students in accessing arts instruction, especially students of color, those receiving free and reduced lunch, those in special education programs, and multilingual learners. To address all of these findings, the Seattle K–12 Arts Plan was created, which we know today as “The Creative Advantage.”

The Creative Advantage officially launched in 2013-2014 with the first “cohort” of 13 schools from the Central K-12 Pathway. Every following year, the initiative continued to expand into more regional K-12 pathways that by 2024-25, The Creative Advantage had been successfully integrated into every school throughout the district.

The Creative Advantage Approach

In order to realize the Seattle K-12 Arts Plan strategies and arts goals, a series of approaches were designed and are still carried out today. These approaches are:

• Increase arts instruction in schools
• Facilitate arts planning in K-12 neighborhood pathways
• Fund, connect, and support community arts partnerships
• Provide professional development for educators and teaching artists
• Stay accountable

The Creative Advantage Progress

Each year, a third-party evaluator gathers quantitative and qualitative data on both the implementation and the impact of The Creative Advantage. They have found overall that arts learning has become a priority, not only for the district, but for the city and community at large.

Additional encouraging findings from more than 10 years of implementation:

• Largest gains in equity were for students of color furthest from education justice, Latinx, and Black students.
• Built teaching and learning systems in alignment with best practices and state standards: 21st Century Arts Common Assessment, Secondary course alignment, The Roots Culturally Responsive & Antiracist Arts Framework.
• At the beginning of this initiative, 40% of K-3 students received no arts instruction. Today, all SPS elementaries have at least one arts discipline, and some have both.
• Opened the Media Arts Skills Center to connect arts to career opportunities for secondary students.
• Launched the district’s first Seattle Public Schools Youth Arts Collective – 10 student leaders from 10 different high schools in all 5 regions in dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts.

---