About HSPVA Friends

To ensure the continued excellence of Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts 

The mission of HSPVA Friends is to cultivate support for Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in order to enhance educational, professional, and artistic opportunities for current and future students of Kinder HSPVA. 

HSPVA Friends is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. To achieve its goals, HSPVA Friends collaborates with community leaders, artists, and parents to cultivate and disseminate private funding for arts activities at Kinder HSPVA for which public funding is either unavailable or insufficient. HSPVA Friends is governed by a 12-member Board of Directors. The staff also assists hundreds of parent volunteers who provide unique support structures for the art areas: Creative Writing, Dance, Instrumental Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Vocal Music. HSPVA Friends has received millions of dollars in generous support from foundations, corporations, and individuals for projects that encourage excellence in education and the arts. We pride ourselves in providing the financial resources and program support that Kinder HSPVA needs in order to deliver a cutting-edge curriculum to students from all walks of life, granting them access to the finest tuition-free arts education in the country.

For more information about Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, visit www.hspva.org.

We exist to serve Kinder HSPVA. Program funds raised and managed by HSPVA Friends are spent at the discretion of the faculty and staff. The teachers are curriculum experts. They know what supplies, equipment, and teaching artists will help current students succeed.

We provide budget stability with sustainable growth. While providing for Kinder HSPVA’s immediate needs, the HSPVA Friends staff and Board work together to prepare for the school’s future financial needs, creating fundraising goals with the next year – and decade – in mind.

Parent involvement is essential. Every parent at Kinder HSPVA is welcome and invited to participate in HSPVA Friends activities, regardless of their ability to contribute financially. HSPVA Friends organizes parent volunteers by art area using the Guild structure to create opportunities for parents to learn from each other as they become active supporters of their child’s specific curriculum.

Every Kinder HSPVA student deserves access to the highest level of arts education. HSPVA Friends shares HISD’s value of equity. We recognize that students have different circumstances and need different resources to achieve the same outcome. To that end, in addition to providing art area and school-wide project budgets, HSPVA Friends provides scholarships and financial aid for art area supplies, private lessons, summer programs, field trips, and college audition trips.

The arts are intrinsically valuable and worthy of the support they require. Each of the school’s six art areas is unique and requires unique volunteer, administrative, and financial resources to thrive. With that in mind, we work with the teachers and principal to create custom budgets and fundraising calendars for each of Kinder HSPVA’s programs. We also support the teachers’ commitment to a school culture in which artists – from renowned masterclass instructors to current students managing their own gigs – are fairly compensated.

Like the school it supports, HSPVA Friends was one of the first institutions of its kind. It began in 1978 as MusicFest, a forward-thinking group of volunteers awarding scholarships to students at The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. In 1997, MusicFest was renamed HSPVA Friends and embraced a profound mission expansion in order to address a broad range of needs at the school, including specialized equipment, masterclasses and guest artist residencies, production support, and the school’s participation in national art conferences and competitions. In the years that followed, HSPVA Friends became an inspiration and model for other arts school support organizations.