About Interchange

Arts integration emphasizes learning in and through the arts. Interchange, a collaborative program of COCA, engages students and improves learning by providing classroom teachers with another set of tools – the use of the arts to bring lessons to life. Through Interchange, St. Louis’s diverse arts and cultural organizations partner teaching artists with classroom teachers to change the way teachers teach and students learn.

The concept for Interchange emerged in 2003 when the Ford Foundation approached the Center of Creative Arts (COCA) about applying for a grant to use arts integration as a mechanism for academic improvement. A planning grant in July 2004 led to the establishment of a community collaboration of arts and cultural organizations partnering with the St. Louis Public Schools to pilot arts integration strategies.

Interchange launched an arts enrichment catalogue in 2006, providing support to teachers to select arts education programs produced by local arts and cultural institutions. In 2008, Interchange revised its model to focus on professional development of classroom teachers. The new approach, which centers around in-classroom collaborations between teachers and teaching artists, was piloted in three schools in the Spring of 2008.

Today, Interchange provides collaborative residencies partnering teaching artists from local arts and cultural organizations with teachers in schools in the St. Louis Public Schools and Normandy School District. One of these schools, Jefferson Elementary School, is the St. Louis Public Schools’ first arts integration pilot school.