Our Mission Statement: To train and inspire students of all ages in the performing arts while instilling the qualities of confidence, self-discipline, creativity, and respect for others.
Our History
The SPINDRIFT SCHOOL of PERFORMING ARTS was established in 1994 by Pacifica residents and musicians, Martha Phillips-Bootzin & Alexander Bootzin. Martha passed away in 2008 but her legacy remains and is a huge presence in this community we love so much. As Pacifica’s only non-profit performing arts school, SSPA has grown into a vibrant community organization. We provide high quality performing arts experiences and training by way of youth performances, classes, private lessons, year-round camps, and school site programs to well over 3000 students each year, in Pacifica and beyond.
We have worked hard to establish roots here in the community by providing a stable base for children to train in the arts with the best artists possible to train them. Because of the overwhelming support by the community, students and families, and the local school districts, we have grown in leaps and bounds over the past 27+ years.
We welcome one and all to our Spindrift Family. The experiences your children have here and the friends they make will last a lifetime.
Spindrift School of Performing Arts Racial Equity and Inclusion Statement
At Spindrift School of Performing Arts (SSPA), we are committed to the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion within arts education. Whether within the classroom or within our organization as a whole, SSPA cultivates an environment where every individual, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, age, education, disability, sexual orientation or identity, feels valued, respected and seen. Our school is run in a nondiscriminatory and anti-racist fashion, rooted in the belief that all deserve equality of opportunity. Furthermore, we prize diversity and the vast array that is human experience; we cultivate an environment where all voices are valued and heard.
SSPA strives to be a model of the aforementioned principles and to act as a positive force in both the realm of arts education and the lives of our students—we recognize that it is they who embody the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In order to fulfill our role as exemplar, SSPA strives to:
- Treat diversity, equity, and inclusion as intrinsic to our mission and as necessary to ensuring the well-being of our students, staff and community.
- Regularly consider, acknowledge and dismantle any racial inequities within our organization, continuously updating and reporting our progress in this regard.
- Explore potential underlying assumptions that interfere with inclusiveness and anti-racism.
- Make it a board priority to regularly consider how systemic inequities affect our organization’s work and how we might address these effects in a manner consistent with our mission.
- Question assumptions surrounding the portrait of an instructor/role-model and who might be well-equipped to occupy a teaching role.
- Commit time and resources to the expansion of diversity within our organization, its instructors and its students.
- Model respect and tolerance in all areas of our organization, a practice which we expect from both our employees and our students.
SSPA is actively pursuing the following action items to help promote diversity and inclusion within our organization:
- Expand our offerings of multi-cultural and ethnic art forms.
- Actively explore and put on productions which are either written by or address the experience of underrepresented groups.
- Provide outreach which brings diverse and underrepresented art forms to our community.
- Actively bring in guest artists and performers who offer unique perspectives, whether of culture or identity.
- Emphasize a culture of inclusion through a blog space for instructors, former students and current students identifying with underrepresented groups.
- Pool resources and expand offerings for underrepresented persons by connecting with other arts organizations committed to diversity and inclusion.
- Actively equalize opportunity and cultivate a student body which reflects the diversity of our community by exploring ways to make our tuition and scholarships (and thus our performing arts offerings) more accessible.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
Spindrift School of Performing Arts would like to acknowledge that the land we work, learn, and commune on is the original homelands of the Rumaytush Ohlone people. We acknowledge the painful history of genocide and forced removal from this territory, and we honor and respect the many diverse Indigenous peoples still connected to this land on which we gather.
