Straz Center: Opening Doors Through the Performing Arts

Straz Center brings transformative arts education to more than 70,000 students, families, veterans, and community members across Tampa Bay.

With support from the Foundation, the Straz Center for the Performing Arts continued to expand access to high-quality arts education, reaching more than 70,000 people throughout the Tampa Bay region this year.

Through its comprehensive Arts Education Program, Straz provided opportunities ranging from sequential music, dance, and theater instruction for pre-K through 12th-grade students to outreach programs serving 40 under-resourced schools and community agencies. Programming also reached military veterans and families, individuals with special needs, and young people who might otherwise have little or no access to meaningful arts experiences.

Among those 70,000 participants was a group of teenagers experiencing homelessness and living with their families at Metropolitan Ministries. Through a weekly Straz Center outreach playwriting class, the teens became more than students—they became playwrights, actors, and collaborators.

Working alongside professional teaching artists, the students explored storytelling, character development, dialogue, improvisation, and acting while creating an original play of their own. Their experience was further enriched through Stay Gold, an educational initiative connected with the Broadway production of The Outsiders. Students read S.E. Hinton’s novel, explored its themes of friendship, belonging, resilience, and hope, and learned how the story was transformed from page to stage.

In January, the group attended the Broadway touring production of The Outsiders at Straz Center. For most, it was their first experience seeing a live theatrical performance. They were also invited to a private post-show conversation with members of the cast and production team.

Just weeks later, the students stepped onto a Straz Center stage themselves. Their original work, Battle of the Families, received its world-premiere reading during the Center’s BIPOC Play Reading Festival—presented alongside works by professional playwrights.

The impact of Straz Center’s work extends well beyond the stage. Its growing Arts and Health programming is bringing together the arts, medicine, science, and technology to explore how creative experiences can support health and well-being. New initiatives include multidisciplinary Creative Aging programming, continued service to Tampa Bay’s military community, and opportunities for young people to explore the connection between the arts and wellness.

Whether introducing a child to music, giving a young person their first experience inside a theater, supporting veterans through the arts, or helping teenagers discover the power of their own voices, Straz Center demonstrates how access to the arts can create connection, confidence, and opportunity.

More than 70,000 arts education experiences represent more than a number—they represent thousands of individual opportunities to learn, create, belong, and be heard.