Julie Fry

Grantmakers in the Arts began its work to enhance the arts in federal education policy in 2012 when it created the Arts Education Funders Coalition, an interest group within GIA that is open to funders with an arts education passion and portfolio, whether they are members of GIA or not. Led by a small advisory committee, we contracted with Penn Hill Group, a Washington, D.C., policy and lobbying firm with expertise in education.

Download:

   Forum on Arts Education (1.2Mb)

I am fond of telling folks about my arts background, having grown up in the 1960s and ’70s in a town of two thousand people in central Wisconsin surrounded by cranberry bogs and paper mills. I didn’t see a professional arts performance until I was in high school, but from an early age my parents provided me with piano lessons and my school supplied me with an abundance of arts activities: bassoon lessons, chorus, marching band, art classes.