Welcome Teachers!

The Santa Paula Art Museum's ArtSPARK educational program ignites students' imaginations and opens the door to arts education and creative exploration. The Museum offers on-site exhibit tours and hands-on workshops, walking tours of Santa Paula’s public murals, and arts-integrated lesson plans. All ArtSPARK tours and resources are free of charge, and are designed to increase arts access in our local schools through engaging activities for students, and simple integration for teachers.

Support for the Museum’s ArtSPARK education program comes in part from the California Arts Council, the County of Ventura’s Arts and Culture Investment Fund, John Logan and Tommy Tonge, The Suzanne Arnstein Johnston “Another Beautiful Day to Excel” Fund, The Smith-Hobson Foundation Fund, and The Paul and Anne Leavens Family Fund.

Join Our Educators Email List

Receive updates about the Museum’s ArtSPARK School Tour Program by joining our educators’ email list! You can opt-in here: Join our Educator Email List.

Free Lesson Plans

The Santa Paula Art Museum creates original lesson plans based on current museum exhibitions of local artists that can be adapted for all ages and grade levels. These lesson plans are available to teachers for free! Check back every other month to see our newest lesson plans, or join our educator email list above to have them delivered to your inbox. Contact us at educator@santapaulaartmuseum.org with questions, and/or to receive corresponding California Visual Arts Standards and discussions prompts for each lesson.

ArtSPARK On-Site Museum Tours

During on-site museum tours, Museum Educators lead collaborative discussions, idea exchanges, and questioning strategies to encourage critical thinking, interpretation, and verbalization skills. Students tour the Museum's current exhibitions, and participate in a fun and engaging hands-on art project to reinforce exhibit themes. We cover California Visual Art Standards: 4 -Analyze and Interpret Artistic Work, 6 -What is an art museum? How do artworks cultivate appreciation, understanding, shape ideas and experiences? and 8: Interpret intent and meaning in artistic artwork.

SPAM’s ArtSPARK School Tour Program is offered at no cost to schools. For more details and to request a school tour, please fill out the tour request form below. Once your information has been received, a member of our team will contact you to confirm the date and details of your tour. Tours are 90 minutes and are available on Monday and Tuesday.

We also offer a walking tour of Santa Paula’s public murals! The mural tour can be done in lieu of, or combined with an abbreviated museum tour (30 minutes). Please add “mural walk” to the special request section of the tour request form below if interested. The walk is led by our educator and includes an introduction to murals, a map of Santa Paula, and notes for students to take home. It is a one-mile loop and takes about one hour to complete.