National Endowment for the Arts Acting Chairman Mary Anne Carter has approved more than $80 million in grants as part of the Arts Endowment’s second major funding announcement for fiscal year 2019.  Included in this announcement is an Art Works grant of $25,000 to Nashville Opera for All-Access Opera Education. Art Works is the Arts Endowment’s principal grantmaking program. The agency received 1,592 Art Works applications for this round of grantmaking, and will award 977 grants in this category.

“These awards, reaching every corner of the United States, are a testament to the artistic richness and diversity in our country,” said Mary Anne Carter, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Organizations such as Nashville Opera are giving people in their community the opportunity to learn, create, and be inspired.”

“I am so proud of this recognition and support by the National Endowment of the Arts for All-Access Opera Education,” remarked John Hoomes, CEO and Artistic Director of Nashville Opera.  “This unique program, developed by Nashville Opera’s Director of Education Anna Young for our Mary Ragland Emerging Artist Program, provides an inclusive opportunity for all children to experience the beauty and power of opera.  Nashville Opera is looking forward to partnering with other opera companies to bring this exciting and innovative program to a wider audience.”

To support All-Access Opera Education and make opera inclusive for all students, Nashville Opera's Education Tour brings a fully-staged children's opera directly into schools and reaches thousands of students in Middle Tennessee over a seven-week period. A key component of the tour is a unique project called "All-Access Opera Education," which provides elementary and middle-school teachers with evidence-based toolkits and performances modified to bolster inclusion for children with a wide range of learning styles, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, reading disorders and other differences. Nashville Opera will partner with several other opera companies to use the All-Access toolkits, collect quantitative data post-performance, and analyze the toolkit's effectiveness. Our goal is to remove barriers to opera and make the arts more accessible.

For more information on this National Endowment for the Arts grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. For more on the Nashville Opera, click here!