The Community Arts Partnership (CAP) began in 1990 as a partnership between California Institute of the Arts, an arts college, and three community arts centers: Plaza de la Raza, the Watts Towers Arts Center and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). The partners collaboratively designed imaginative, in-depth arts training programs in the areas of theatre, jazz, video, instrumental training and public art aimed at junior high and high school students. Each after school and weekend program was designed to provide college-level arts training to young people in their own neighborhoods while furthering each organization’s long-term institutional goals, as well as providing training for CalArts students to teach art in a variety of community settings. CalArts faculty artists work with community artists at the art centers to offer high quality, imaginative and innovative workshops for thousands of teenagers throughout Los Angeles County.

In 1992, the partnership expanded to include as partners Inner City Cultural Center, the Armory Center for the Arts and Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies. Inner-City Arts, Encino Media Center and KAOS Network joined CAP in 1995 and 1996. In 1994, CAP initiated the Santa Clarita Valley Arts Partnership with the Santa Clarita Valley Boys and Girls Club and the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Orchestra at College of the Canyons. In 1998, Self-Help Graphics & Art in East Los Angeles joined the partnership, and Side Street Projects in downtown Los Angeles and Visual Communications in Little Tokyo joined in 2000.

One of CAP’s most ambitious initiatives, the Digital Arts Network (DAN), has linked ten of the partner arts organizations with digital arts labs complete with video teleconferencing capabilities. The DAN project began in 1999, providing weekly workshops for teenagers at all ten sites. This program trains hundreds of youth participants each year in new technologies, while allowing students to develop relationships and create art collaboratively across the geographic and cultural boundaries of Los Angeles.

In 2002, a new partnership was formed with the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department to design and implement the Sony Pictures Media Arts Program. This program offers twice-weekly classes in drawing, animation and media arts to middle school students at five community centers: Banning’s Landing Community Center in Wilmington, Center for the Arts Eagle Rock in Northeast Los Angeles, San Fernando Gardens Community Service Center in Pacoima, Watts Towers Arts Center in Watts and the William Reagh Los Angeles Photography Center near MacArthur Park. In 2003, CAP joined with the Los Angeles Unified School District to design and implement in-depth arts programs with seven Options high schools in Los Angeles, increasing to twelve schools during 2004/2005.

Today, CAP oversees forty different programs with twenty partner organizations at forty sites throughout Los Angeles County and offers intensive arts training free-of-charge to elementary, junior high and high school age youth in art, theatre, theatre production, video, digital arts, graphic design, drawing, printmaking, animation, public art, photography, writing, jazz, world music, chamber music, dance, puppetry and advanced instrumental training.

To date, CAP has provided arts education workshops for an estimated 200,000 students, mounted more than 1,500 performances and exhibitions of student work at more than 200 venues throughout Los Angeles County before a collective audience of more than 300,000, provided over 20,000 students with in-depth college-level arts training and inspired thousands of students to enroll in institutions of higher education, including nearly 100 who have enrolled at CalArts.

CAP also has conducted a national survey of community-based youth arts collaborations for the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, received semi-finalist status in the National Endowment for the Arts’ Coming Up Taller Awards for three years and was awarded the Coming Up Taller Award by the President's Commission on the Arts in December, 2004.

The CAP model for arts education focuses on collaboration, in-depth, imaginative college-level training and individual attention to students through low student-teacher ratios averaging 4:1. The Community Arts Partnership is grounded in the belief that the arts provide an important cultural voice for youth in communities throughout Los Angeles. The high school students are mentored by the college students and are encouraged to envision and attain higher education through scholarships and access to faculty, artists and college admissions practices. The CalArts student instructors receive training through a semester-long arts pedagogy course offered through CAP and the CalArts School of Critical Studies. The CAP programs are also designed to create and sustain long-term reciprocal relationships between institutions, artists and communities.