The Suffolk Center for the Cultural Arts announced recently it is the recipient of a $10,300 stimulus grant to support education at the center.

The money will account for part of the salary for a director of education. Jody Mazur started this week in that position. Her job will involve finding partners for educational activities at the center, supervising the community school of the arts, spearheading a home school initiative and more. The partners might include schools and nonprofits, Paul Lasakow, the center’s director, said on Thursday.

Lasakow said arts education is the reason for the center’s existence.

“Education is absolutely central to what we’re doing over here,” he said. “It’s not just our middle name, it’s our first, middle and last names. If it’s not educationally related, I don’t want to touch it.”

The grant money comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and was allocated by the Virginia Commission for the Arts. More than $300,000 was distributed in Virginia. The grants were specifically to preserve jobs in arts organizations, and the jobs could not be fundraising jobs, according to the Virginia Commission for the Arts.