Becoming an Affiliate Partner

Working together locally to strengthen communities nationwide

Each year, Wolf Trap's affiliate partners reach thousands of children, educators, and parents across the nation and around the world through long-term community-based partnerships. Each Affiliate is a partner program sponsored and maintained by an arts or education organization that has replicated the Wolf Trap Institute model for early learning through the arts. The programs are run by the sponsor organization, but work closely with the Institute staff at the Wolf Trap Foundation in Virginia to receive ongoing training and support and participate in the Affiliate Partner network.

There are currently 23 Affiliate Partners across the country. See the full list of Affiliates and their sponsoring organizations to find out whether Wolf Trap is in your community.

Joining a powerful network to change children's lives through the arts

Becoming a Wolf Trap Affiliate Partner gives your organization the tools and resources to create lasting change for your community's youngest learners. You'll be part of a national collaboration among arts professionals, early childhood educators, master teaching artists, and community leaders to share program expertise, advocacy, and training and to pioneer new programs that meet the changing needs of the preschool and Kindergarten classrooms.

Affiliate partnerships grow out of ongoing, substantial conversations between a potential sponsoring organization and the Institute staff to ensure a shared vision and a good fit for the Institute model within the sponsor's mission. You'll have opportunities to engage funders and administrators in your community and invite them to see Wolf Trap classrooms in action. Your program plan will be developed with a structure to sustain the partnership for a minimum of five years. It takes time and care to form a Wolf Trap affiliate, so that you'll be able to have an impact on education in your community for the long term.

Sponsoring organizations are most often arts organizations; however you may also be a university, early childhood association, or other organization actively serving children and educators in some capacity. Some of the characteristics of a potential sponsor include:

• Not-for-profit status
• Articulated mission statement and artistic vision with demonstrated comparable arts education programs in communities served
• Access to and an existing working relationship with Teaching Artists (professional performing artists with experience working in process-oriented arts-in-education school-based programs)
• Access to early childhood consultants familiar with local early childhood and arts-in-education best practices
• Experience in creating and administering arts-in-education programs that are school or center-based
• Relationships with school districts and/or Head Start, or other preschool or Kindergarten programs

Learn more about becoming a Wolf Trap Affiliate Partner.

Building leadership in early childhood arts integration

These are just some of the benefits of joining Wolf Trap's national network of Affiliate Partners: