Denver Public Art University

DPAU is a project dedicated to protecting each student’s rights to a free arts education, uncensored self-expression, and active community engagement.

Visit the University website.

Every day teachers, students and parents join our great and growing community based around Denver creative education. Add your name to our list of supporters today.

DPAU is 100% supported by generous people like you, who believe in the power of creative education. Support this project with a financial contribution right now.

Free art classes for every child in Denver

We built and are maintaining, the Treehouse Youth Arts School, a free K-12 creative learning institution located beneath the Denver Art Society in the heart of Denver’s Arts District at 734 Santa Fe Dr Denver, CO 80204.

We provide free crucial resources to enrich local educational offerings, empower local schools, and help teachers work directly with the community to bring the best creative education possible.

Learn more about the Treehouse.

DPAU Free Art Library

Our library is written by people like you: parents, teachers, and community organizers can help you bring art back into your home, your school, and your neighborhood.

For Parents

• Learn how to introduce your child to art
• Find daily art exercizes
• Introduce your family with other cultures
• Share your family teachings with others

For Schoolteachers

• Find lesson plans for classes of all ages
• Meet other teachers
• Collaborate on teaching resources

For Community Organizers

• Learn how to throw an art event
• Open your own neighborhood art market
• Meet other community organizers
• Learn how to build an art school

For Cultural Institutions

• Safeguard your teachings forever
  • Your DPAU teachings are stored safely away from malicious software
  • All editions are backed up, securely, with access from any web browser
  • Share your heritage and culture with the world
  • Bring new awareness to your cause, your institutions, and your people
  • Attract new audiences from all across the globe
  • Introduce new apprentices to your culture
  • Initiate new students to your teachings
• Meet other art and culture lovers
  • Join in group discussions with others who share common interests.

We built the city’s first free art university

We are mobilizing more than 50 community teachers and arts educators to deliver classes in their own neighborhoods. We believe the best education comes from local teachers, to local students, in local schools.

Arts teachers unite

The DPAU Public Library (including our textbooks, teaching plans, workbooks, etc) is maintained, communally, by our collective network of arts teachers. Everything is shared. Every resource in the library is free for anyone in the world to use for any purpose.

A virtual hub of this knowledge, dpau.org, is made possible thanks to an extremely generous software grant from Google, as well as a tireless group of nerds who call themselves the Code Council at DPAU.

How schools save jobs

Classes are taught by volunteer teachers, in donated classrooms, using free technology. So each dollar you donate goes much farther, helping recruit teachers, enroll classrooms, and build schools for low-income neighborhoods.

Schools generate tens of thousands of capable minds in Denver every year. We can do more. We can involve the community on every level, and use schools as a way to bring us closer together. For example, we make it possible for every DPAU student in any home in Denver can access every DPAU teacher in any school.

A Free & Sustainable School

We don’t enact a single program that makes our beneficiaries dependent on our services. Such “choke-chain” charities can run the risk of harming the very people the charity sets out to help. DPAU develops communities by empowering the individuals who live there.

How You Can Help

Donate.

You can add your name to our list of supporters or show your support by chipping in $3 to keep us strong and free.

You can also donate in any amount to help us get needed supplies, by add your name to our Honor Wall, or even forge your name into the ArtWalk forever.

Denver Art Society is a registered nonprofit organization. Our tax-id is 27-0750665.