The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts (CATA) is an educational charity that helps children to experience the arts in a high quality and sustained way. CATA provides access for young people who would otherwise grow up having had no, or very limited opportunity, to engage with the arts.

Children & the Arts’ extensive and growing network across the UK, which in 2007/8 included more than 35 regional arts partners, demonstrates the effectiveness of linking arts organisations to schools in their communities.

The impacts of Children & the Arts’ work include:

CATA’s work proves that the arts can improve self-esteem and confidence as well as a child’s attainment across the curriculum. Perhaps most importantly the arts encourage creativity, experimentation and fun, often changing a child’s attitude towards learning forever.

The StratREAL Foundation Foundation has helped CATA to plan confidently and strategically since its inception in 2005.

The StratREAL Foundation’s annual grant to Children & the Arts has played a major part in helping to establish and to deliver Start, the charity’s flagship national programme that links arts organisations to schools in their communities. The StratREAL Foundation has been pivotal in helping CATA to grow the Start programme reaching 10,430 children in its first year, growing to 15,980 in 2007/8 and 21,921 in 2008/9.

Over the past three years, The StratREAL Foundation’s support has enabled more than 8,000 of these children to experience the arts first-hand.

Children & the Arts has grown in size and reach since The StratREAL Foundation started funding - turnover rose from £395,000 in 2006/7 to £1.16m in 2007/8. In addition, the charity now runs a creative teacher training programme called ‘Catalyst’ and will work with 47 arts partners across the UK in 2008/9.

Research amongst Start participant teachers in 2008 found that: