Who we are

Inspired Child envisions a world in which every child has access to quality early childhood education and enters kindergarten ready to learn. We recognize the arts as a powerful tool for creating positive social change and removing systemic and structural barriers to equality. We stand in solidarity with marginalized communities and offer support by celebrating and amplifying diverse voices.  

Our Mission

The mission of Inspired Child is to improve the quality of early childhood education for children from birth to age five living in Washington, DC’s most under-resourced communities. We inspire a life-long love of learning and books through arts-based literacy programs for children and their teachers and families. We are a program of Dumbarton Arts & Education.

Our Values

Inspired Child was founded to promote diversity, community, accessibility, and love of the arts and learning for children who might otherwise have limited access to books or high-quality early childhood programs. Every day, we seek to empower children by using the ultimate medium of human expression – the arts – to advance their learning.

Our Programs

Our award-winning, arts-based early learning programs for children, teachers, and families inspire a lifelong love of learning, books, and the arts. Our brochure below provides more information on our programs for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, early child educators, and families.

Our organization works to promote

Inclusion

So that all participants feel welcomed, valued, respected, supported, and able to be fully themselves.

Diversity

So that we recognize and value the things that make us different and the ways those differences strengthen us as a community. We embrace a definition of diversity that includes race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, religion, ability, socioeconomic status, education, marital status, language, and other identifiers that may distinguish one group or individual from others.

Equity

So that all policies and practices ensure fair treatment for all and give everyone the opportunity to fully participate. Our approach to equity requires identifying barriers that have historically prevented the full participation and some individuals and groups, making the effort to eliminate those barriers, and making space for these historically disadvantaged groups. This includes actively working to dismantle centuries of systemic racism and engaging in meaningful anti-racism work.

Access

So that we are working to foster attitudes, behaviors, and policies that promote equity and diversity, allow for inclusion, and fully benefit from the variety of perspectives and backgrounds in our community.

History

Inspired Child was founded in 1994 as Inner City-Inner Child, the education outreach program of Dumbarton Concerts. Dumbarton Concerts began community outreach in 1987 with a program called Live Music Now!, an initiative to bring music out of the concert hall and into isolated neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. Through this work, we discovered that young children had the greatest unmet needs in our community. Several years later, Inner City-Inner Child was created to provide high-quality arts integration and early childhood development programs to community-based early childhood centers throughout Washington, D.C. By helping 35 community-based child development centers obtain their NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) accreditation and by bringing teaching artists into classrooms in underserved communities, Inner City-Inner Child improved the quality of early childhood education.

In 2021, we renamed our program Inspired Child, which we feel captures the way the arts open children to new possibilities and give them a lifelong love of learning. Inspired Child is today a unique provider of high-quality, arts-focused early childhood education opportunities for children, professional development for their teachers, and family workshops that provide parents with the tools they need to support their child’s literacy development at home. Our programs promote school readiness for preschool children in low-income neighborhoods in our Nation’s Capital by introducing teachers and children to the power of integrating the arts with academics.