826DC is a nonprofit supporting students aged 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and helping teachers inspire their students to write. Services include drop-in tutoring, field trips, workshops, and assistance with student publications. Also operates the Museum of Unnatural History in the Columbia Heights neighborhood.
Americans for the Arts is an advocacy group located in DC and NYC. Promotes October as National Arts and Humanities Month, advocates for arts education in primary education, publishes information on the economic impact of the arts.
CentroNia is a bilingual and multicultural learning center that trains volunteers for one-on-one tutoring for students in the Columbia Heights and Shaw neighborhoods of DC in grades 1 – 12. Provides affordable education, professional development, and family support services.
Since 1978, Children’s National Medical Center has sponsored Creative and Therapeutic Arts, an arts education and cultural enrichment program that hosts exhibitions, performances, and multi-disciplinary artists-in-residence.
DC Creative Writing Workshop hires professional writers annually to work with students from Hart Middle School, Simon Elementary, and Ballou High School in SE DC, both in class and after school. Publishes a literary journal, hArtworks; offers a 6-week workshop in Holocaust Studies called “Teaching Tolerance” with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; and runs a Reading Resource Center and Drama Club.
DC Scores promotes creative writing and soccer to students in grades 8 to 12, at multiple locations throughout the city. After school program, winter nutrition and soccer program, free summer camps focused on soccer and the arts. See profile by Zachary Elkin in the Spring 2010 issue.
Free Minds uses books and creative writing to empower young inmates to transform their lives. Based in DC.
Higher Achievement is a program for DC students in grades 5 – 8 emphasizing academics, the arts, and leadership. Runs after-school and summer programs, regularly includes poetry in their curriculum.
The Arlington Public Schools sponsors The Humanities Project to support paid, short-term and longer classroom residencies in the literary, performing, and visual arts.
Hurston/Wright
is a resource for Black writers. They offer workshops for teens and adults, an annual award for college writers, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards for new books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
Literacy Volunteers and Advocates provides free classroom instruction and one-on-one tutoring for adults in DC with limited literacy skills.
PEN/Faulkner hosts public readings by nationally-known writers of fiction and nonfiction. Also sponsors Writers-in-the-Schools in urban high schools and administers the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence i the Short Story and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Sitar Arts Center serves children and youth of DC from diverse ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds. Offers workshops in writing, visual art, and the performing arts.
Smith Farm hosts gallery exhibits, workshops, and community outreach programs for people affected by cancer.
Spring for Poetry is an annual public art program sponsored by the Takoma Park Libraries, placing posters with poems throughout Takoma Park, MD. The web site reprints each year’s posters from 2007 to the present. Conceived by Merrill Leffler, the project is presented in partnership with Montgomery College and the Takoma Park Department of Public Works.
Swapping Stories is an inter-generational oral history and storytelling project. Judy Thibault Klevins, Coordinator.
The Washington Literacy Center trains volunteers how to teach basic reading and writing skills to adult learners in DC.
Words Beats & Life hosts community workshops, panels for teachers, and publishes a journal of hip hop. Their motto: “Remixing the art of social change.”
Writopia Lab offers workshops in fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, playwrighting, and poetry for youth aged 8 to 18 in the DC area, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Young Women’s Drumming Empowerment Program sponsors performances and summer workshops in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC for young women. Also runs a visiting schools program. The program incorporates African and Latin hand drums and percussion with poetry, song, movement, and team building.