The Santa Barbara Bowl may be most visible when it’s packed, but its influence might be strongest when it is empty. In recent years, the Bowl’s grantmaking and community partnership side has grown into a robust and multifaceted organization that has an impact throughout Santa Barbara County. The Bowl’s Education Outreach program, or EdOut for short, offers critical funding to area groups seeking to bring performing arts opportunities to young people. Whether that’s a chance to attend a Bowl show on a subsidized ticket, to participate in a workshop run by any one of a dozen organizations such as Girls Rock S.B. and Boxtales Theatre Company, or to obtain a musical instrument and lessons on how to play it through the Bowl’s Instrument Fund, the Bowl Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the lives of young people through the performing arts.
Speaking with Kai Tepper, the energetic program manager at EdOut, I learned about the Bowl’s most recent collaboration with the Santa Barbara Education Office, which was to create an annual award for the county’s Performing Arts Teacher of the Year. In a reflection of the program’s mission to support all types of performance and yet prioritize music instruction, three of the last four teachers named have been music teachers. Tepper emphasized the importance of collaboration to every phase of the EdOut project, saying, “Anything we do, it wouldn’t happen without partnerships.”
Established in 2016, the Performing Arts Teacher of the Year award has thus far gone to four of the most dynamic and deserving educators in the region. Sarah Barthel, who teaches AP Calculus as well as drama and chorus at Lompoc High School, was the first winner, and her impact there has been enormous. The 2017 awardee, Brett Larsen of Adams Elementary School in Santa Barbara, has established a program there that begins as early as kindergarten with vocal music and Orff instruction, and continues through to 4th grade, when all students at Adams have the opportunity to learn to play the violin. Larsen is also the coleader of Bravo!, the citywide orchestral music training organization.