June 02, 2025

On Pause : Artist in the Classroom and Artist in Education

Dear ArtStarts Community,

We regret to inform you that ArtStarts has made the difficult decision to pause our operations, effective at the end of June 2025.  We know that services like grant delivery, artist directory, the booking and touring service, and the ArtStarts showcase have been a valued resource for students, artists, and educators for the last 29 years, and we recognize that this news of a pause in our services may be disappointing. 

ArtStarts is proud to have served the province with discounted artist services and grants for thousands of performances, workshops, and projects in BC schools.  However, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain the scale of operations. We hope to refocus our organization and we remain hopeful and optimistic for the future of ArtStarts and our work supporting schools and artists across the province.

As a result, the ArtStarts board has made some difficult decisions, including pausing current operations while we restructure the future of our organization. Please know we appreciate your patience, and look forward to a time when our organization can be better positioned to support arts and culture in schools. 

• The delivery of the Artist in the Classroom and Artist in Education grants will be paused for the 2025/2026 school year.  
• Resources to touring artists and educators will be made available at:  https://artstarts.com/guides
• During our pause in operations, we will no longer be able to support artists with bookings or payment processing. ArtStarts will continue to process contracts and invoices into summer of 2025. 
• The artist directory will no longer be connected to payment processing or booking services.  In advance of our pause, we will share the current contact information of directory artists with schools and districts at the end of June. 
• If you have an ArtStarts community login it will remain active until June 30th so you can retrieve any outstanding information. 
  If you are seeking to fill in your final AIC report : please visit this link https://artstarts.tfaforms.net/122
• If you have questions please visit us at artstarts.com