ABOUT YOUNG AUDIENCES OF SAN DIEGO

The world desperately needs workers and leaders who are creative, disciplined and visionary. The arts—music, dance, theater and the visual arts—foster those qualities in today's students—tomorrow's workforce.

For 47 years, Young Audiences of San Diego (YASD) has dedicated itself to integrating the arts into the education and lives of all children of our region through an extraordinary range of high quality performances, residencies and workshops to help our young people identify their cultural roots and discover their creative wings. Why?

Because the arts:

•  Are fundamental to what it means to be an
    educated person

• Are the richest and most far-reaching expressions of human creativity, achievement and communication
• Inspire self-confidence
• Build basic and critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• Allow students to develop their self-discipline and important social, cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills
• Expose young people to many cultures and viewpoints, fostering ethnic pride and intercultural and interracial understanding
• Reach the hard-to-teach student and keep kids interested in school

Without Young Audiences of San Diego, the arts are unavailable to most children because families either can not afford them or, with both parents working away from home, there is not enough time to take children to arts activities.

Performances by our professional artists often become a child's first encounter with the beauty of ballet, the majesty of the French horn or the excitement of Latin American samba.

YASD is a statewide leader in creating outstanding arts-in-education programs. We select superior professional musicians, dancers, actors, visual artists, writers and storytellers who are skilled in communicating with
young people.

Our assembly programs are a great introduction to the arts, and the hands-on workshops and artist residencies go beyond appreciation and bring children (and teachers) a powerful medium for personal expression.