Welcome to Arts for Life!

We support Florida high school seniors who excel in the visual and performing arts with scholarships.

Apply for a Scholarship

Scholarship in the Arts

Arts for Life! recognizes the creativity and artistic talents of high school students throughout Florida. Annually, Arts for Life! awards $1,000 scholarships to 25 Florida high school seniors who demonstrate academic and artistic excellence in creative writing, dance, drama, music or the visual arts.

Creative Writing

Dance

Drama

Music

Visual Arts

Columba Bush
Philanthropist

Columba Bush’s passion is the arts. As First Lady of Florida, she visited classrooms throughout the state, experiencing first-hand the incredible influence of the arts on the lives of students. She especially enjoyed meeting high school students and learning more about their dreams and desired career paths. So, with the support of Governor Bush and many fellow arts advocates, she started Arts for Life! in 1999 to help high school seniors pursue their dreams in the arts after graduation.

Since then, Arts for Life! has awarded more than 600 scholarships to help Florida students pursue their artistic dreams. Many past scholarship recipients have gone on to become professional actors and actresses, singers and musicians, dancers, artists and art educators.

Apply for a Scholarship

Arts for Life! annually awards $1,000 scholarships to 25 graduating high school seniors in Florida who demonstrate excellence in creative writing, dance, drama, music or visual art. Launched by former First Lady Columba Bush in 1999, the program has awarded scholarships to more than 600 gifted high school seniors.

Apply for an Arts for Life! scholarship online or download the application.

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2023 Award Winners

Creative Writing
Allyson Abarca

Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts, Miami-Dade County

Sofia Korostyshevsky

Miami Arts Charter School, Miami-Dade County

Willow Olrich

Gulliver Preparatory School, Miami-Dade County

Hallie Presley

Lake Brantley High School, Seminole County

Allyson Abarca

Excerpt from Left - A Short Film

INT. CAR - MORNING

CHARLIE, a young woman, stares at her reflection in the sun vizor. Though all we see is the back of her head and her short hair.

She puts on a pair of thick sunglasses and fiddles with a few strands of her hair before turning to the side.

We can finally see Charlie. Partially.

With the sunglasses obscuring a third of her face and a black leather jacket wrapped around her body like a baby blanket.

She sits sideways in the passenger’s seat with her feet pulled up as she begins to pick at her nails impatiently.

She checks the time on her phone, 10:38.

She looks out the windshield to the unmoving front door of the basic town house she is parked in front of.

Her eyes flicker between the two.

10:38

Front door.

10:38

Front door.

10:39

Front door.

10:39

Front door moves.

Out comes SAM, a teenage girl dressed like a middle-aged secretary in grey and black business casual.

She locks the door tightly before putting the keys in her pocket.

She makes the quick walk from the front porch to the driveway and opens the car driver’s seat door.

Sam places her purse into the backseat, and in quick succession:

Sits down.

Closes the door.

Locks the door, unlocks it, locks it again.

Pulls her seat belt across her body and buckles it, then gives it a good tug.

Readjusts the steering wheel. Pulling it a little forward then a little back.

Wait... She pauses, eyes dot around her surroundings, raking her brain for what she's forgetting.

Checks each mirror.

Adjusts the steering wheel again.

Tucks her hair behind each ear in one simultaneous motion.

AH! That's what it was, she forgot to breathe.

Breathes.

Yes, that should be alright.

Finally, Sam turns to Charlie.

Sofia Korostyshevsky

Oblivion

I forgot the title of the old yellowed fantastical pages I read until 2am

The misspelled name of the dollar pizza that closed 5 months ago

The aromatic whiff of fresh-brewed coffee on a bustling city corner

The intersection between some west street and avenue

...which also fell out of my mental pocket

What would it be like if memories sparked like fireworks?

But they trickled down like shower water into a drain, I don’t even know when-

And the sour sweet feeling of ice cream melting on my tongue

The warm cotton texture of my favorite shirt

Flew away like a helium balloon, let go by a sticky hand

The soldiers occupying my mind are fighting to their death to understand

Endless layers of three-variable algebra, and names of chemical bonds, nitrite, nitrate

And the numerous hidden messages in the book I have yet to find

Analyze in a paragraph that loses sense the longer my pencil caresses the paper

For some there is a happy ending

For some, a heartbreaking conclusion

On how to navigate the deep waters of an ocean, with a map hastily drawn in crayon

Hoping with crossed fingers, not to get capsized by an imaginary monster

As a pirate without a crew

Willow Olrich

Cartograph

Coin from every fifty states collected to cardboard casket

can’t contain the little images the little history the little lifes and deaths,

the raiments of the mapmaker, the taking the discoverer,

the winding crags of a great body of seventy percent water

the ridges bending breakbone, the treehouses in the larynx, the lights show

is the swirl of starlight in the stomach, the turning, the learning

that it shouldn’t be like this is chasm, scaffolded scramble bramble to bramble is

Coiled sinew-serpent jabbed into the hedges of this swelling thing

which refuses and eludes imposition, instigates attrition,

sleeks down the ribcage canopy, draped in the open arms closing

the flesh become landscape in tumult

the everdeath of old worlds and the molting into new ones

trace all the shapes to convey, to hold the shapes of foreign lands,

a-bridged, the brief new world, pressed against.

Hallie Presley

Excerpt from Ambush - A Short Story

Boom!

Colorful sparks rained down from the sky like rain, though much slower.

A few seconds later, the colorful sparks sparkled one last time, before dying out, leaving the

valley empty and dark once again, the only sign that fireworks had gone off was the smoke that stuck around, as if trying to cling on, to tell him that his sister was coming.

She was coming.

The only noises now were the sound of his breathing, and the occasional hoot of a nearby owl.

Everything else was pure silence.

Omen looked back down at his crossbow, where the fireworks used to be. He looked at it with an

unreadable expression, but he was disheartened. He thought it would work. Wasn’t that what she said? That she’d find him?

Some things really are too good to be true.

He was too numb to the emotions to really do anything else but stand there. He barely breathed, and he didn’t focus forward at all, and instead felt his body become heavy and the familiar pit forming in his chest, always threatening to swallow him whole.

He stayed there for a few more moments, readying himself to leave, when there were the sounds of footsteps behind him. It was…different from Xavier’s. It sounded heavier, more foreign, yet…familiar?

The footsteps stopped.

Dance
Joshua Armstrong

Pasco eSchool, Pasco County

Victoria Holt

Florida State University School, Leon County

Joshua Armstrong

Victoria Holt

Drama
Jessie Doherty

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, Duval County

Ianna Velazquez

Miami Arts Studio 6-12 @ Zelda Glazer, Miami Dade County

Careagan Williams

Harrison School for the Arts, Polk County

Jessie Doherty

Ianna Velazquez

Careagan Williams

Film
Lydia Broward

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, Duval County

Lydia Broward

Music
Isabela Diaz

New World School of the Arts, Miami-Dade County

Cole Laudenslager

Pine View School, Sarasota County

Elena Medic

Miami Arts Charter School, Miami-Dade County

Pablo Pupo

School for Advanced Studies, Miami-Dade County

Isabela Diaz

Cole Laudenslager

Elena Medic

Pablo Pupo

Visual Arts
Emma Fordham

Sebring High School, Highlands County

Mia Lang

Bishop Moore Catholic High School, Orange County

Melannie Mejia

Design and Architecture Senior High, Miami-Dade County

Nicole Molina

New World School of the Arts, Miami-Dade County

Taylor Norman

Design and Architecture Senior High, Miami-Dade County

Arysmel Rodriguez

New World School of the Arts, Miami-Dade County

Sasha Suey-Stoler

Pace High School, Santa Rosa County

Ava Williams

North Fort Myers High School, Lee County

Lathan Williamson

Harrison School for the Arts, Polk County

Austin Yuan

Trinity Preparatory School, Seminole County

Sally Zarling

Venice High School, Sarasota County

Emma Fordham

Mia Lang

Melannie Mejia

Nicole Molina

Taylor Norman

Arysmel Rodriguez

Sasha Suey-Stoler

Ava Williams

Lathan Williamson

Austin Yuan

Sally Zarling

Alumni Spotlight

Katerina McCrimmon

2016 Winner in Drama

Congratulations to Katerina McCrimmon, 2016 Arts for LIfe! winner in drama, who will star as Fanny Brice in the upcoming tour of Funny Girl.

Jessica Chancey

2015 Winner in Music

Congratulations to Jessica Chancey, 2015 Arts for Life! winner in music. She recently won a seat in the Louisville Orchestra as the orchestra’s third flute and principal piccolo.

Support Students

Help support a new generation of artists by becoming a patron of Arts for Life! Your contribution will support the Arts for Life! student scholarship program, which helps offset college expenses for young Florida artists who demonstrate extraordinary talents in creative writing, dance, drama, music or the visual arts. View our uniform disclosure statement.

Sponsors

The Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2023 Arts for Life! program:

Patrons of the Arts

Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah

The Cobb Family Foundation

Kathleen Shanahan