Inspired by exciting, ongoing research into connections between brain development and music, Tucson’s Opening Minds Through the Arts (OMA) is a leader in a national movement to integrate arts education with core curriculum.

OMA uses instrumental music, opera, dance, theater and visual arts to help teach reading, writing, math and science to children in kindergarten through 8th grade. Each fully implemented OMA school has an Arts Integration Specialist and a team of seven artists who work alongside classroom teachers, adapting each lesson to support teaching of core skills and knowledge. In addition, children learn to play the recorder, violin, a wind instrument and keyboard. In Tucson, OMA employs more than 50 artists from the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Arizona Opera Company, University of Arizona Schools of Music and Dance and other arts organizations to teach 30-minute, twice-weekly classes for 32 of the 36 weeks of the school year that support core-curriculum goals. In the 2006-7 school year, the OMA Program is operating in 34 elementary and 3 middle schools. See our complete list of OMA schools.

OMA is supported by TUSD, and by the non-profit OMA Foundation. A long-term goal of the OMA Foundation is to establish OMA in every Tucson Unified School District elementary and middle school. You can help!

- supporting the arts

Homegrown and nationally recognized, OMA works!