New leader of Philadelphia organization for arts in schools sees hope in collaboration

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The Philadelphia Arts and Education Partnership has a new executive director, who is facing a new landscape for funding teaching artists.

Anjoli Santiago has taken the helm of PAEP just as a state program dedicated to teaching artists has been eliminated. Last year, the PA Council on the Arts rebranded itself as PA Creative Industries and streamlined most of its grant divisions into a single program, cutting the program specifically for Arts in Education.

PA Creative Industries has also discontinued its regional partnership program, which relied on local coordinating organizations to foster grants. PAEP was the PCI’s Philadelphia partner for teaching artists. Santiago said that partnership represented about half of PAEP’s operation.

“It is a big piece of the pie,” she said. “It is also not just the funding, but it is the loss of trust in what arts education could do and the impact that it has for our society.”

Before her promotion, Santiago had been PAEP’s program director since February 2025. She has had a lengthy career as an arts administrator, including stints at Classroom Champions and the Philadelphia Theatre Company.

Beyond her day job, she is a performer, writer and teaching artist. Santiago has had gigs with the now defunct Amaryllis Theater, Power Street Theater, WHYY on its podcast “Philadelphia Revealed,” and even with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, teaching a nature writing workshop at the John Heinz Wildlife Preserve at Tinicum.

“I just stretched a BA from Temple theater as far as I could,” she said.

Leveraging the arts in STEM subjects

The PAEP is a non-profit that supports arts education in schools, typically with teaching artists, and encourages schools to incorporate the arts into other school curricula, including science, technology and math.

“I see it being cushioned through the framework of design thinking: Try, try again,” Santiago said. “It is the same road map as the scientific method, which is the same road map as creativity in writing a poem, in writing a play, in creating a sculpture with your hands and creating music beats. There is always a revision process. True in science, true in the arts.”

A 2015 study published in the journal The Educational Forum showed that dance instruction for a class of seventh graders diagnosed with emotional or behavioral disorders not only improved their social and emotional states but also helped increase math scores.

“That’s what we’re doing here at PAEP,” Santiago said. “It’s creating the experience so that learning becomes joyful. Curiosity is safe.”

Supporting arts in schools in the future

PAEP connects schools with teaching artists and helps them navigate state Arts in Education grants through the Pennsylvania Arts Council on the Arts, now called PA Creative Industries. The Arts in Education division has been discontinued but, in theory, money will still be available for teaching artists through PCI’s general funding categories.

Despite an increase in arts funding in the current state budget, Santiago said she expects money for teaching artists will become harder to secure.

“Within the stated PCI vision, there is no clear funding stream to specifically support teaching artists,” Santiago said. “Now or in the future.”

Regional arts advocates organized a statewide campaign to push back against PCI’s restructuring decisions. It saw some success, including the restoration of a state fund targeting arts organizations with smaller budgets.

Santiago said she believes the network of arts organizations that rallied in the wake of the PCI restructuring could be the key to keeping teaching artists in schools.

“The way I see it, surviving what’s coming is really leaning into each other as non-profits, leaning into each other as community members,” she said. “How do we lean into each other instead of going all for the same pot of money? PCA has transferred to PCI and they are creating new opportunities, so it’s not that they are gone. It’s just that we have to work to reinvent.”

Other arts advocates share Santiago’s optimism. Eric Morales with Movimiento Administradores de Arte en Pensilvania was instrumental in pushing state legislatures to bump the art budget from $9.5 million to $10.5 million and sees hope in a groundswell of advocacy.

“We’re living in strange economic times. It’s hard to know what will happen,” he told WHYY News in July 2026. “What makes me more optimistic than anything is seeing the sector come together.”