Center for Puppetry Arts

GIVE A HAND

to the Magic of Puppetry Arts

A culturally rich city, Atlanta is home of one of the largest puppetry non-profits in the world! The role of the arts in our community is multifaceted as it relates to its value; its economic impact; its role in economic, community, and neighborhood development and redevelopment; its strength in enhancing the human connection; and its legacy for generations to come. . . starting with our young children.

Regrettably, art is still at the bottom of any list of community or national priorities… but the arts are, in fact, a critical part of the infrastructure of a community and its people. For any city that aspires to a "world-class” status, arts education plays a vital role in the community.

For our children especially, art can be a vital component to creating success:

• Low-income students who participate in the arts, both in school and after school, have a dropout rate 5 times lower than their peers.
• Low-income students engaged in the arts are more than twice as likely to graduate college as their peers with no arts education.
• Students who take 4 years of arts and music classes average almost 100 points better on their SAT scores than students with only a half-year or less.

A puppet show is one of the first experiences a child has with performance arts, even before they see a play, ballet, or even go to their first concert. They learn to use their imagination when bringing an inanimate object to life. It’s an activity that provides sensory stimulation simultaneously for intellectual and emotional development . . . and the best part?  It’s fun!

Won’t you please . . .Give A Hand . . . and help bring underserved children from our community to the Center?  No donation is too small or too large.

The Field Trip Fund

 The Center is committed to reaching children of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds through its Field Trip Fund. With the support of generous donors, this mission-critical initiative provides free and discounted admissions to schools, daycares, and community organizations, ensuring financially disadvantaged children can engage with the Center’s educational, entertaining, heartwarming, and thought-provoking programming.\

For almost 40 years, the Center has used its Field Trip Fund to ensure that children from all backgrounds can experience an educational, arts-infused day engaging with puppetry. Pre-COVID, the Field Trip Fund provided an annual average of 75,000 deeply-discounted (and in some cases, free) tickets to groups, including those working with low-income and underserved students. Approximately 35% of the public school children who visit the Center come from Title I schools, designated as such due to the large number of low-income students they serve. By leveraging the generous gifts of our supporters, the Field Trip Fund subsidizes a sliding scale of discounts for group tickets (based on Title I status, number of students, activities, etc.) and gives financially disadvantaged children the opportunity to experience the magic of puppetry.

All-Inclusive tickets to Family Series performances (which includes workshop and museum admission) start at $22 and can be as much as $35 per person, but through the Field Trip Fund, the Center is able to separate out the services and offer school groups discounted rates. With an average subsidy of $14.25 per person, schools are asked to pay $8.50 per person to see a performance, $4.75 for each student participating in a Create-A-Puppet Workshop, and $4.50 per person for museum admission, and deeper discounts are given to Title I schools. This allows school groups to customize their visits and book one, two, or all three of the Center’s core programming areas, plus these discounted admission prices make it easier to book the school buses needed for field trips.

The Field Trip Fund helps the Center maintain its status as one of the most accessible arts institutions in metro Atlanta. Georgia ranks 50th in the country for public funding of the arts per capita, so for many children, field trips represent their only opportunities to visit arts and culture organizations. Study after study has demonstrated that arts programming boosts learning and achievement in children for subjects such as literacy and math while teaching them skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. The Center’s Field Trip Fund helps expose thousands of children to the arts and broaden their horizons. Through the Center’s holistic, interactive programming, generations of metro Atlanta’s children have found their love of the arts ignited and discovered their own artistic potential. With your support, the Field Trip Fund will continue to harness the magic of puppetry to plant the creative and philanthropic seeds that will keep Atlanta flourishing for generations to come.

For more information visit puppet.org