Moving Ahead with The Arts
Q & A with Any Given Child Jacksonville’s executive director, Allison Galloway
A unique collection of committed individuals has been working behind the scenes, planning and plotting – striving to provide greater, more equitable access to quality arts education in Duval County. The group, known as the Community Arts Team, or CAT, came together when Jacksonville was chosen by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the 14th city to be part of the Any Given Child program, a nationwide initiative with the goal of expanding and deepening arts access for students in grades K–8. The community-wide initiative was awarded to the partnership of Cathedral Arts Project, Duval County Public Schools, and the City of Jacksonville in August 2013.
After spending a year deep in the “strategic planning process,” the CAT have emerged with five specific long-term goals or action items. This diligent preparation and an introduction to the “implementation” phase of the program was brought to the city’s attention at Art Walk on November 5, a day that was proclaimed Arts and Culture Day in Jacksonville.
To learn more about the program and what it could mean for our city, we hear from Any Given Child Jacksonville’s executive director, Allison Galloway, who believes that early exposure to the arts can shape who you are, and has spent her entire career working in arts education, including – most recently – a stint as the director of education at MOCA. It’s easy to see why she is the woman for the job.
