The purpose of Character Through The Arts is to integrate arts agencies/teaching artists and the Artful Learning™ education reform model with proven character education strategies to determine the impact this integration has on moral character and academic achievement. The integration of the three key components of the grant is depicted in the illustration below:

Character Through The Arts (CTTA) is a four-year, $1.7 million dollar grant partnership funded through the U. S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Education Partnerships in Character Education Program.

CTTA connects the arts, teaching artists, and the Bernstein Artful Learning™ instructional model with traditional-didactic and progressive experiential approaches to character education. Artful Learning™ engages students through masterworks, deepening questions, student creations, and reflection. It provides a methodology for addressing character education through an enriching infusion process.

CTTA is explicitly designed to integrate proven character education strategies with the arts as a vehicle for promoting character growth and academic growth in all subject areas, enhance collaboration among teachers, parents, community members, and students, produce a bank of exemplary K-12 character-thematic lessons and learning activities, model continuous improvement through the evaluation of program effects in terms of academic learning, moral reasoning, moral behavior, and moral emotion, classroom climate and school climate. 

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	address each of the Eleven Principles,
	receive and utilize teacher training in the Artful Learning™ model,
	effectively address the State of Georgia’s mandated list of character traits.
	use strategies that involve parents and community members in the program,
	make use of the arts and partnerships with arts organizations as a centerpiece strategy,
	research, select, and implement other strategies that cover a variety of learning modes or research-based avenues to learning.