History

A BRIEF HISTORY

While all the cultural institutions in Miami Beach have cultural missions, integrating arts and cultural instruction into the K-12 daily schedule can be a challenge given the complexity of the school program, the diversity of the feeder pattern, and the different mediums of cultural content providers. The Bass in partnership with the City of Miami Beach began a STEAM Plus Pilot program during the Spring of 2019. Over 2000 children were impacted in the STEAM Plus pilot program of 2018-2019. The purpose of the pilot was to Beta test the delivery of this arts programming into the daily school curriculum. Through this pilot program, six City of Miami Beach feeder pattern schools partnered with six Miami Beach cultural institutions to integrate STEAM.

During the 2020 - 2021 academic school year the program delivered unique programming as created by the Bass, the Miami City Ballet, the New World Symphony, the Jewish Museum, the Wolfsonian, and Young Musicians Unite, and other institutions or organizations to seven (7) of our public schools. The schools offered this opportunity include Biscayne Elementary, Feinberg Fisher K-8 Center, Nautilus Middle, North Beach Elementary, Miami Beach Senior High, South Pointe Elementary, and Treasure Island Elementary. The programming will fit into the Miami-Dade County Public School system STEAM initiative but take the arts programming to a new level.

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The program has been carefully developed to provide grade-appropriate content for each level. And while not every grade level will receive instruction from all institutions, if the program is maintained all grades will experience all institutions over the course of the K-12 education. Over the course of the STEAM Plus program, each institution will be visiting their school partners at least 4 times during school hours. Some partnerships can include a field trip to the cultural institution’s location, as well, some cultural institutions plan for a culminating event such as a performance or exhibition.

Program impact and survey findings can be found within the 2019-2020 Final Report.