The Arts Help Kids Grow

Can a ballroom dancing class turn kids into better students?

For hundreds of local kids, the answer is a resounding “Yes!” 

When kids are exposed to classes like art, music or movement, they’re given the opportunity to learn how to listen, cooperate and follow directions. Programs like Mad Hot Ballroom and Tap coordinated by Danceworks help children focus their energy and channel it into productive movement. (The kids just call it “having fun.”)

Each year nearly half a million children in southeastern Wisconsin, many underserved, get access to the arts thanks to programs presented by UPAF Member Groups. Your gift to UPAF helps keep these programs running.

In fact, UPAF funds the largest youth symphony orchestra in the country, Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra and First Stage's First Stage Academy, the country’s largest youth theater training school. And, programs like the Bel Canto Boy Choir gives kids the opportunity to work with world-renowned groups like the Vienna Boys Choir.

UPAF Member Groups like the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra work with schools to integrate the arts into the curriculum. Kids get a multi-disciplinary approach to learning that helps them make connections between what they learn in a textbook and what they experience in their daily life.

Research has shown that kids who have participated in UPAF Member-sponsored arts programs have improved test scores and are more focused, in control of their emotions, confident and caring, helping them become adults who are engaged in their communities. That makes life better for all of us.