Cathedral Arts Project Teaching Fellow in Strings Josh Stone, center, bows following a performance at the Riverside Arts Market on Saturday, May 2, 2026. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on August 17, 2026 at 9:09 pm
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A city-funded pilot program to provide arts education for military service members’ children shows promise as an academic booster, according to a report out this month.
The nonprofit Cathedral Arts Project’s Brave HeARTs program, launched in the 2025-26 academic year, was created based on analysis by the Florida Data Science for Social Good program at the University of North Florida. Brave HeARTs launched with a $250,000 grant from the city of Jacksonville.
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The program provided in-school programs, as well as two free summer camps, programming at the Mayport Child Development Center, and a Military Family Day that is held in partnership with Blue Star Families Jacksonville.
Cathedral Arts Project Vice President of Advocacy and Community Engagement Lucy Chen says it reached 4,300 students in the 2025-26 academic year. She recalls meeting one of them during summer camp whose family moved every three years, but he did not feel comfortable explaining why because of the sensitivity of his father’s career. However, he was able to connect with other children from military families who precisely understood his situation.
In previous years, the data partnership with Florida Data Science for Social Good led CAP to focus on arts advocacy and provide arts-related field trips for students in Jacksonville’s urban core.
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“The skills that we learn through the arts, it’s kind of like athletics in some ways. You have to practice,” Chen says. “In a world that is rapidly changing, some of the most important skills for kids to have is having grit, perseverance and knowing how to work in a team environment…So those are, perhaps, the most important traits for kids to have growing up as they bring them into the future workforce.”
Making military families feel at home
Duval County Public Schools estimates it serves between 7,500 and 8,000 military families each academic year.
“As military families face a difficult cycle of relocations, their children face unique challenges in creating friendships and building a stable sense of belonging,” said Brant Marcus, a UNF master’s student who studied CAP’s impact, during an Aug. 4 presentation.
Marcus’ work is focusing on psychological science. He partnered with Amanda Braden, a master’s student at UCF who is studying data analytics.
Dan Richard, co-founder of the Florida Data Science for Social Good program, says it connects data science students like Marcus and Braden with nonprofits and community organizations to solve real-world problems.
Cathedral Arts Project focused on four schools in the pilot: Abess Park Elementary, Mandarin Oaks Elementary, Venetia Elementary and Springfield Middle. That quartet all have a reputation for serving military families, helping students from military families transition into a new environment, and already have a CAP connection.
“Where you offer arts access, where fostering a community of belonging and where these children feel secure in that belonging, we’re seeing improved outcomes in both personal and academic performance,” Braden said.
Collectively, their teachers reported 51% of the students made gains in academic engagement over the school year. Nearly two-thirds of their parents reported their child increased their communication skills. And nearly three out of four students (74%) said they had better mental focus last academic year.
Nearly two in three students (66.9%) in the Brave HeARTs program were proficient in the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking tests for both English and mathematics. That was more than 10 percentage points higher than the districtwide average of 56.3%.
The Cathedral Arts Project’s new academic year kicks off as the Jacksonville City Council proposes to pause, and potentially cut, half of cultural service grants funding for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. CAP is one of the current city grantees, but less than 15% of its overall funding comes from public sources, Chen says. It focuses on its relationships with business, civic and philanthropic organizations and volunteers to navigate any uncertain spells from the public sector.
Long before Richard moved to Jacksonville to serve on the faculty at UNF, he played trombone and trumpet in a small Louisiana town and parlayed his talent into a band scholarship. Richard’s personal experience is why he believes even small investments in the arts can have large reverberations throughout the decades.
One place the ripples may be noticed is Jacksonville City Hall.
Monday was the first day of a two-week installation of paintings and mixed-media pieces by the elementary and middle school students who CAP serves.
