Support local students with GRAM’s Field Trip Fund!
Our students don’t just deserve field trips, they need them!
For many teachers across West Michigan, the cost of transportation and admission is the difference between a field trip that happens and one that gets quietly cut from the calendar. The students who would benefit most from an afternoon of observing, wondering, and creating are often the ones least likely to get the chance.
GRAM is uniquely positioned to close that gap through the Field Trip Fund. Each visit is built around facilitated thinking routines—simple prompts to slow down, look closely, question, imagine, and shape explanations using evidence. And new research confirms the outsized benefits of arts-focused field trips:
Students who go on field trips become more empathetic and tolerant. A study conducted by the University of Arkansas found that students that participate in a field trip to an art museum show increased empathy, tolerance and critical thinking skills. Studying art gives students a chance to think about a topic or theme from a different perspective. 1
Art museums activate imaginative thinking, foster constructive dialogue, and nurture self-expression. These are foundational skills that students can carry into the future, long after the bus ride home.
1 Greene, J.P., Kisida, B., and Bowen, D.H. (2014). “The Educational Value of Field Trips: Taking students to an art museum improves critical thinking skills, and more.” Education Next, 14(1), 78-86.
Growing Young Minds
Your gift to the Field Trip Fund covers student participation fees for school tours, materials for art-making workshops, and transportation reimbursement.
Every child who walks through our doors because of the Field Trip Fund leaves more curious, connected, and certain that art has something to do with them — that this museum is a place where they belong. Help us make sure that’s true for every classroom that asks to visit — not just the ones that can afford it.
The per unit cost is $38/student. This includes everything (hard costs, transportation, staff time, overhead).
Through these interactive experiences, students will engage in transformative cultural experiences that inspire creativity, critical thinking, constructive dialogue, empathy, and self-expression.
October 1, 2024 – September 30, 2025
Field Trip Fund — School Experience Data
• 48 art museum visits
• 17 school districts
• 37 schools
• 100 classrooms
• 1063 students for tours (PreK-12th grades)
• 968 students for workshops (PreK-12th grades)
• 290 adults (teachers, additional school staff, chaperones)
Additional Field Trip Fund data:
• 54% of all students who visited GRAM this year for school tours utilized the Field Trip Fund.
• 64% of all students who participated in school workshops at GRAM this year utilized the Field Trip Fund.