Pictured above is a mural outside of the attendance office at Iftin Charter School in San Diego, Calif. on Thursday, March 13, 2025. The mural says "Salaam" which is a common greeting in Arabic-speaking and Muslim countries. (Photo by Hannah Psalma Ramirez)
SAN DIEGO-- It’s 9 a.m., well past the start of the school day at Iftin Charter School. Just like the rain drops clinging to the front office windows, vents and door handle, the students who trickle in have a hard time being unnoticed by school staff.
Some students stare silently in dread at the women typing behind their desks while others try to scurry past, only looking at the connecting door for campus. With an expert ear and hidden glance, the women working the front desk know exactly which child to expect and command them to head to class. The fear becomes bashful smiles in response to their names as they cross the room.
Even at the risk of a tardy pass that hasn’t been given yet, their squeaky footsteps stop. Blocking the grey drab sky is a relief of color.
Pictured is an extension of a mural at Iftin Charter School in San Diego, Calif. on Thursday, March 13, 2025. The mural was a collaboration with Iftin Charter students and ArtReach, a local Art nonprofit organization. (Photo By Hannah Psalma Ramirez)
It’s a magical view. They are no longer in San Diego but right in front of orange and red sand dunes drifting across a desert in East Africa. Their eyes meet a purple camel sprouting out of wet concrete with a knowing smile. When the nomads across the orange horizon don’t come, the shuffling of backpacks and umbrellas continue.
Iftin Charter School in City Heights, is home to just one of 50 murals that ArtReach has done since 2019.
The San Diego based organization aims to make arts opportunities accessible to youth, working with students in transitional kindergarten up until 12th grade. Through a variety of low cost to free art services, with their most popular to date being their mural-making program.
A veteran to struggling art scenes
For sisters Judy Berman-Silbert and Sandi Cotrell, ArtReach was their Hail Mary to another hopeless turn for the arts. Severe budget cuts at San Diego Unified School District in 2007 led to staff layoffs and gutted arts programs.
Berman-Silbert recalled at a meeting with a visual and performing arts coordinator.
“They used to have a board up on the wall with all the schools,” she said, “And it would say, music, art, drama, whatever. And the number of schools getting visual art instruction was pretty small.”
“I vividly remember it was four,” Cotrell said, “It was horrifying. We couldn't believe our eyes.”
At the time, San Diego wasn’t the only city struggling to meet national art standards.
Out of 1,800 California schools surveyed between 2005-2006, 29% did not offer a standards-based class in any of the four arts disciplines – more than half didn't even have one full-time equivalent arts instructor.
After offering their help to staff at San Diego Unified, the sisters were able to convert an existing school-wide program Berman-Silbert ran at her child’s elementary school called Taste of Art into the future nonprofit.
With Cotrell’s experience as managing director for ArtWalk, a decades-old organization in San Diego bringing fine art festivals to the county, they were able to establish ArtReach within the same year as the budget cuts.
According to their website, they have now been able to reach 75,000 students across San Diego.
While recent acts like Proposition 28, a 2022 voter-approved boost of $1 billion to arts programs, seem like a move in the right direction, school districts locally are still limiting course availability.
A 2022 follow-up report to arts offerings in California schools also found that only 11% of school leaders said their schools offered all four art disciplines— showing no growth from 2006.
As data keeps pointing to schools lacking in their own resources, nonprofits like ArtReach are instrumental in filling in gaps and bringing expert instruction.
“It takes a village to get all the arts to the kids, and that's a good thing,” Cotrell said.
“It’s not just a painting;” the value beyond a lesson
As ArtReach’s team of artists has expanded from just one artist to a staff of about 17, it’s not just more manpower for the organization, but new perspectives and specialties.
Isabel Halpern, ArtReach’s mural program manager, joined in 2015. Three years later, she pitched and started the service after her own experience creating several murals as an intern with another public art program Mural Arts Philadelphia.
“I was doing a lot of teaching with ArtReach and saw it as a good opportunity to work with students,” Halpern said.
“A lot of the schools that I was working at just had a lot of blank, sad wall spaces.”
The way the program works is through a word-of-mouth method, in which schools reach out and request their services. From there they use the School Accountability Report Card, a California Department of Education tool that evaluates school incomes, to determine which schools are eligible for ArtReach’s services for free.
Last year alone, ArtReach worked with 703 students to teach them how to create a mural at their own school and were able to provide free services for six Title 1 schools.
Students and teachers from Learn4Life Innovation High School, wave standing in front of the school's new mural on Thursday, March 27, 2025 at Chula Vista, Calif. (Photo by Hannah Psalma Ramirez)
But for schools, it's not just an exciting project for students to participate in, but a lasting statement of their school’s identity.
Through the guidance of professional artists, they collaborate with students and school staff who all brainstorm potential designs celebrating the history and diversity of their schools.
Iftin Charter, known for its history as a predominantly Somali and refugee school, the mural ArtReach did in 2023 was just the touch they needed.
Esteban Sanchez, the lead artist for the project, worked closely with school staff and did extensive research despite not having previous knowledge of Somali culture.
In the final design, viewers can witness key details such as the national flower of Somalia, camels as symbols of resilience and even greetings in multiple languages near the school entrance.
“Someone even went as far as to say that it really made them feel at home, which was awesome,” Sanchez said. “As an outsider, I didn't want to just come in and, like, throw a bunch of stuff on the wall that they didn't connect with. So, I just really wanted to make sure that they felt everything was right.”
By prioritizing community representation as their mural mission, ArtReach is also combating a larger problem in the art world: an institutional lack of representation. A 2019 analysis found that of the art displayed in major US museums, over 80% of artists are white and male.
Researchers in Urban Studies and academics have long pointed to murals as a way to highlight diverse stories, make art accessible to lower income communities and recreate community narratives.
“People feel like they belong now and it's cool that the school did something like that with art,” Riyan said, an eighth grader who got to witness the painting process.
“And I feel like, even if it's not a mural, kids did enjoy that, so stuff like that in the future would be cool.”
Art nonprofits can give cities and artists a leg up
While the arts have been historically undervalued in relation to their money-making potential, new data challenges that narrative.
A 2022 study by the U.S Bureau of Economic Analysis found that arts and cultural economic activity accounted for 4.3% of the U.S’s Gross Domestic Product, which is $1.10 trillion.
According to an economic and social impact study on arts nonprofits, that same year, these types of organizations $151.7 billion of that economic activity.
The San Diego nonprofit arts industry alone generates $1.2 billion in economic activity annually. Spending by these organizations and their audiences have supported 16,900 jobs and generated $320.7 million in local, state, and federal government revenue.
“Investment in the nonprofit arts and culture industry builds the communities where people want to live and work,” Randy Cohen, vice president of Research for Americans for the Arts, explained.
“When we prioritize diverse cultural expressions and traditions, it nurtures social connections, promotes community pride and identity, and boosts tourism by providing the authentic experiences that draw visitors to the community,” Cohen said.
For ArtReach’s co-founders one of their main goals from the start was hiring and supporting working artists.
“It's one of those things where I never would have guessed that I'd be making a living doing any kind of artwork. I kind of assumed that I would have a desk job or something,” Sanchez said.
“I really hope more orgs like this pop up, so that more artists can do this as their full-time gig.”
Affirming the value of these types of organizations, San Diego earlier this year created its first-ever cultural plan to invest in the arts over the next decade.
The first goal the plan outlines explicitly stresses the need to support the success of artists through nonprofit arts and cultural organizations.
“Our commitment to innovative solutions for rising costs, lack of affordable spaces and ongoing inequities is essential for thriving creative communities,” Christine Jones, Chief of Civic Art Strategies for the Department of Cultural Affairs, said in response to the new priority.
Time will tell the city’s success with shaping San Diego as a ”global creative center.”
When Sanchez takes off to yet another campus, from time to time, he will hear students say,“‘I want to be an artist one day,” ”I want to be a muralist one day.”
“They start to see art as a potential avenue for life.”
Takeaways
ArtReach, a San Diego arts nonprofit, established to offset the detrimental effects of school budget cuts has grown into a formidable resource for youth and communities in the city. Their unique mural-making program is just one example of the specialized arts education they bring to students. This medium of arts education has become their most popular as their work now spans 50 locations. Aside from their impact in encouraging students towards the arts, nonprofit organizations like ArtReach help create budding economies nationally and locally.
Despite federal threats to funding for arts organizations that don’t comply with Trump’s anti-DEI policies, ArtReach is one of 131,000 nonprofit arts organizations that have been able to escape untampered and continue serving community and cultural inspired public art. And strategic planning from the city of San Diego and local grants continue to affirm the value of art for youth and other residents.
In the month of February, ArtReach had four schools planned for their mural making services.
Here are the top takeaways proving these findings:
- Judy Berman-Silbert and Sandi Cotrell, ArtReach’s co-founders, recalled that in 2007 after budget cuts to San Diego Unified School District, only four schools received visual arts instruction.
- A 2022 follow-up report to arts offerings in California schools also found that only 11% of school leaders said their schools offered all four art disciplines— showing no growth from 2006.
- A 2019 study found that art displayed in major US museums had over 80% of artists that were white and male. Researchers in Urban Studies and academics argue that murals are the way to mitigate these discrepancies and highlight diverse stories.
- The San Diego nonprofit arts industry alone generates $1.4 billion in economic activity annually.
- San Diego earlier this year created its first-ever cultural plan to invest in the arts over the next decade. The first goal the plan outlines explicitly stresses the need to support the success of artists through nonprofit arts and cultural organizations.