Arts Intranet

Paul King

The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has embraced the Common Core Standards with a fervor that demonstrates a comprehensive commitment to this work. All of our 1,700-plus schools have been engaged in this initiative.

The Common Core is one of the key levers for accomplishing NYCDOE’s goal to graduate all students college- and career-ready. In New York City, the Common Core has impacted work in all disciplines and at every level from the central offices, through our school support structure, and in every school.

Pragmatically, teachers of the arts should be at the table and part of the conversation as the Common Core is implemented at the school level. In the face of the monumental shift caused by  the Common Core, it's important that we find clear and specific ways to articulate how arts education  can reinforce the holistic and comprehensive approach that is at the center of the Common Core.

This is not to suggest that teachers of the arts should teach literacy or math by limiting opportunities for students to create art. In New York City, we remain committed to providing students at all levels with the skills, content, and understandings of the arts, according to the local standards outlined in The Blueprints for Teaching and Learning in the Arts. There are, however, exciting and appropriate ways to align arts teaching and learning with the Common Core that will ultimately benefit our kids.

Let’s look at the Common Core’s English Language Arts non-fiction or informational text requirement. To dig into this a bit deeper, I have four sample questions that we as arts educators can ask ourselves. These questions are by no means comprehensive in tapping into the array of ways that informational text can be used in an arts instructional setting.

1)    In what ways is the deep examination of a work of visual arts for elements of composition comparable, but not identical to, the process of deconstructing informational text?
2)    Can a musical score in a rehearsal setting, with its own system of symbols and vocabulary, be seen and used as informational text?
3)    How might a dance teacher assist students in using informational text (e.g., research and performance reviews) to inform and support making original dances?
4)    How can reading, analyzing, and reflecting upon playwright and directorial statements support an actor’s understandings of the script as he brings the text to life on stage?

Sarah Zuckerman

“To succeed today and in the future, America’s children will need to be inventive, resourceful, and imaginative. The best way to foster that creativity is through arts education,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in Re-Investing Through Arts Education:Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools.

The nation has deemed that learning in and through the arts is critical for the success of all students. This positions arts educators to take a leadership role in implementing what the Common Core means for learning. The arts are different than other subjects; this is what fosters innovative, creative, and critical thinkers. The Common Core opens a door for leadership, an opportunity for the best arts educators to model what teaching and learning should look like across the curriculum…are we ready for the challenge?

What do the arts do, exactly? How does this align with the Common Core?

How the arts progress student learning is too complex for one blog entry. However, I would like to draw attention to a few ways that arts-based learning models the English Language Arts/Literacy instructional shifts of the new standards.

1.  Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction
In arts classrooms that employ reading across the curriculum, this happens quite naturally. Whether we are reading a critique of an artist’s work or reading about the cultural context of a genre of work, art history, aesthetics, and critique all are grounded in content-rich nonfiction. Content-rich nonfiction media in the arts abound for every age from preschool to adult.

2.  Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational
The way a careful observer draws on evidence to interpret an image or production parallels the processes employed when a strong reader makes meaning from a text. Arts teachers require students to find evidence for their interpretations by asking, “What in the work made you say that?”, part of the visual thinking strategy used by many teachers. This focus on evidence is the basis of learning how to view art or performance, as it is learning how to read a text.

3.  Regular practice with complex text and its academic language
In an art museum there is no "Third Grade Gallery" or "High School Wing," nor do we only show children theatre performances limited by reading level. To quote Steve Seidel, head of the Arts in Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education, “The very notion of theatre, of rehearsal, is the close examination of a text.” In the arts, students routinely confront images, lines in a script, etc., that need much more than a glance (or quick read) to understand. The arts train students to make meaning of complex works, the same ability that higher levels of text complexity demand. With the right scaffolding and time allotment, such work becomes accessible to all learners.

The Common Core standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics are driving factors in the educational reforms facing public education today. As an arts educator in the schools, as a teaching artist who provides supplemental instruction with students in and out of school, as a cultural organization working to partner with a school, and/or as an arts education advocate, how can you approach the Common Core standards?

As information swirls around this topic, I am reminded of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I begin by recommending the first rule of galaxy hitchhiking, or in this case, connecting to the Common Core: DON’T PANIC! Here are the reasons why I believe panic is misguided:

1. The Common Core standards, while they expressly contain literacy references across the curriculum, do not replace content standards in other subject areas. Teaching the arts still means teaching to arts standards. Arts standards are set by your state—visit the State Arts Education Policy Database to find your state’s standards.

a. You can also remain up to date on the revision of the National Arts Education Standards—the basis for most state standards—at the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards wiki.

2. The Common Core ELA/Literacy standards are ripe with places of deep connection to the arts. These standards ask for very strong instructional shifts in the teaching of literacy. I encourage you to research these instructional shifts—my favorite way to dig into them is watching the NY State videos done by David Coleman, soon to be head of The College Board

3. Instructional shifts of interest (and relative ease?) to arts educators:

a. Focus on the text in order to answer questions raised in class. Reading and comprehending text is the end goal of these ELA standards. While theatre certainly includes text reading as part of its discipline, all arts areas include texts within the critique and evaluation parts of our disciplines.

b. IF you use a very broad definition of text to include any primary source material, then you can practice the tools of the ELA Common Core standards by closely “reading” or analyzing a painting, a dance, a musical performance. The work we do in the arts—to engage students in critically approaching artistic works—is an almost natural fit with the Common Core ELA standards.

Kristen Engebretsen

Back in February, during the winter meeting for the arts education council, we discussed the results of a survey we had completed asking members of Americans for the Arts what type of programming they were interested in for arts education.

Forty-six percent of respondents said that they would be interested in programming related to broader education reform issues, such Common Core State Standards, No Child Left Behind, the achievement gap, student engagement, and state or federal policy.

As the council discussed how we could weave some of this into our programming, we began an interesting conversation about the intersection between the arts and the Common Core.

First off, several council members asked, what is the Common Core State Standards Initiative (or “Common Core” for short)?

Simply put, the Common Core State Standards are the new English Language Arts and Math standards for student learning.

This initiative started as a collaboration between the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. They wanted teachers to have common standards for what was being taught so that a third grade student in California would have the same standards as a third grade student in Massachusetts. Makes sense, right?

In a day and age where we can’t get our elected officials to agree on much with regards to education reform, it seems impressive that 46 and DC have adopted them so far. These new standards are not “federally” mandated, but rather adopted by individual states. However, there was motivation for states to adopt these standards—they had to adopt them in order to be eligible for Race to the Top funds, which offered states millions of dollars in grant money.

The standards are focused on college and career prep, with an emphasis on higher order thinking skills. They dictate what is to be taught, but not how or when. There are two assessment consortia who are designing digital-based and performance-based assessments for students to accompany the new standards.

Talia Gibas

On my first day of my Ed.M program in arts education I was asked to reflect on a simple series of questions:

Do you consider yourself an educator? Why or why not?

Do you consider yourself an artist? Why or why not?

I’ve gone through a few 'Nervous Nelly' phases in my life, one of which coincided with my starting graduate school. These questions threw my 'Nervous Nelly' into an existential panic. It seemed crucial that I find a satisfying “yes” to both questions. If I couldn’t, well, clearly I was some sort of fraud.

At the time, that exercise seemed like a really big deal. Today, I can’t even remember how I answered the questions. My ultimate takeaway came later, when I compared my classmates’ reflections to my own.

I was one of a diverse group—classroom teachers, musicians, museum educators, arts administrators, etc. We had different skills, backgrounds, and inclinations that would lead us to go on to play different roles in the arts education ecosystem when our program was over. Whether we agreed on a definition of “artist” didn’t matter. What mattered was that we honor the broad and deep skill sets in the room and support and complement their differences.

My personal “artist-and-or-educator” identity crisis was an experience with healthy discomfort. I hope the broader arts education community can find the same in the recent white paper put out by the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SAEDAE).

Roles of Certified Arts Educators, Certified Non-Arts Educators, and Providers of Supplemental Arts Instruction attempts to unpack the “shared delivery” model of arts instruction that many arts education initiatives, including Arts for All, state as their ultimate goal.

It describes strengths and limitations of the three key partners involved in teaching the arts in public schools—named as certified arts educators, certified non-arts educators, and providers of supplemental arts instruction.

Kristen Engebretsen

In my previous post, I described an arts education trend called “coordinated delivery,” in which I discuss the roles of some of the key stakeholders in arts education. Over the past year, Americans for the Arts has been refining our thinking about the theme, “It takes a village to educate a child.”

While the term “coordinated delivery” includes all of the major players that make arts education happen in a single community, it falls a bit short in defining all of the stakeholders, including those at the state and national levels, such as funders or legislators.

The field of arts education is a complex network of partners, players, and policymakers—each with a unique role. After the work we did last year in investigating coordinated delivery, Americans for the Arts wanted to create something that demonstrated how all of these players interact, and to help arts education practitioners understand their relationship with other stakeholders in arts education.

So...we created The Arts Education Field Guide.

The Field Guide is a 48-page reference guide that captures information in a one-page format for each arts education stakeholder, from national down to local partners. Each page defines a constituency and highlights its relationship to arts education in several key areas: support, barriers, successes, collaborations, funding, and national connections. The Field Guide is divided into sections based on federal/state/local tiers, and each page provides information that will help readers understand a stakeholder’s motivations and connections in arts education.

The Field Guide utilizes the concepts from biology of a network or an ecosystem. When bringing this concept to life, we wanted a way to graphically illustrate all of the key players in the field of arts education. I used Google Images to find a representation of the word “network” and then worked with a designer to come up with the motif for our ideas. We also utilized the term “field guide” (the kind that a botanist would use when trying to identify a plant or flower), as a play on words of “the field of arts education” to come up with the title.

Let’s take a quick look at the diagrams in The Field Guide:

Tiffany Hsueh

I’ll speak frankly and concisely: art is not my thing. Coming from a liberal arts background, I feel as if I am straddling two worlds, one of the strictly rational and one of the creative. It is an amalgamation of two worlds that requires abstract thinking, but also real life application of solutions to problems that arise; a world deeply seeped in theory, but living in reality.

I do not think of myself as particularly artistic or creative or musically inclined, even though I’ve tried many times. But art has become, to me, a method of thought, a mindset in which to think, and a lens though which to observe.

Art has moved beyond the physical and literal motions of creation into the realm of the theoretical underpinnings that drive it forward; its genesis. I don’t always agree with a piece of art or the artist, but I respect the thought behind it, the point of view of the artist, and the eventual creation. It’s the process that interests, but also befuddles me. To gain the ability to see, feel, touch, or taste a sensation or concept is enlightening and complicated; complex. I think it’s our ability to empathize with others that allows us to interpret art. It’s the next to best thing other than being the artist his/herself. I would say that the arts are part of our human nature. It is embedded within us just as human emotions are part of our genes.

I was not immersed in theater or band or painting or writing nor did I go to an arts-focused high school. Art was an elective class I took throughout elementary school and middle school and picked up for two years in orchestra during high school. I’ve never taken an art history or photography class, which isn’t to say that I’m not interested in art; I just wanted to explore other things. However, my summer interning at Americans for the Arts has opened my eyes to something so much grander than my notions of art.

While I understand the vast scope of the arts and its importance in society, I did not understand it beyond its textbook definition—that art has been, is, and will continue to delineate culture, history, and life. Art sustains life even in the face of economic trials and political upheavals. It is the process of art that makes it invaluable to me. The arts bring many immeasurable additions to the table and should never be debased to its most tangible form because that’s not all art is.

Since I started my tenure at Americans for the Arts, we’ve been discussing variations on the theme of: “It takes a village to educate a child.”

During the 2011 Annual Convention, we had two arts education leaders (Ayanna Hudson and Margie Reese) discuss how this works in their respective communities. At the time, we were calling this phenomenon “coordinated delivery.”

We featured this trend in our Fall issue of ArtsLink. "Tete-a-Tete: Integrated Arts Education Approaches" defines coordinated delivery as “collaboration across communities for both shared delivery of arts instruction by arts specialists, teaching artists, and general classroom teachers AND shared leadership for arts education among arts agencies, education agencies, parents, and businesses.”

The article highlights the similarities and differences between two well-known coordinated delivery systems in the country: Arts for All in Los Angeles (Ayanna) and Big Thought in Dallas (Margie).

Here are two charts to illustrate the idea of coordinated delivery:

Tim Mikulski

Thanks to a tweet from Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda on Friday, the world became aware of a new tool that I hope will greatly move the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education movement to STEAM (A=arts) instead.

What single tool could be that impactful?

I'll give you two hints. He's three-and-a-half years old and he's red. Get it yet?

Elmo could be the next great STEM to STEAM advocate thanks to plans for a new Sesame Street segment for the show's 43rd season this fall. According to a description of the new "Elmo the Musical" segment of the preschool learning show:

"An extension of our STEAM curriculum, each 11-minute episode is an interactive, fun-filled musical adventure created by Elmo and the child at home. Focusing on imagination and math skills, such as enumeration, relational concepts, addition/subtraction, geometric shapes and many more, Elmo takes viewers on thrilling explorations as he imagines himself in 'Sea Captain The Musical,' 'Guacamole The Musical,' 'Prince Elmo The Musical' and even 'President The Musical!' In 'Elmo The Musical,' kids can sing, dance, play and imagine along with Elmo on math-filled adventures!"

It sounds like a solid effort in showing parents (and their kids) the power of the arts in helping young children to learn other vital skills in science, technology, engineering, and math. Think about it. Are you still able to sing the words to songs like this from Schoolhouse Rock?

Rob Schultz

One of the more disturbing trends in our local public schools is the reduction of classroom time devoted to non-tested subjects. Despite the arts being labeled as “core,” tested areas of the curriculum are among the few things receiving adequate time and resources from strapped school districts.

Going the way of the horse-drawn carriage are things like music, chorus, theater, and visual arts, as well as formerly routine components of a well-rounded education such as recess, and field trips.

For those of us who work outside of public school systems but are determined to provide children with quality arts opportunities, one answer lies in building effective partnerships with our schools.

For many years (decades, actually) the Mesa Arts Center has worked with our local public school system as a partner in delivering accessible programs. For several years, grant funding allowed us to bring fifth graders from a 100 percent at-risk school to our arts center for targeted, afterschool activities in both visual and performing arts, taught by our full-time arts instructors. While the school didn’t have resources for transportation, our grant provided it—from school to the arts center, and we took them home.

More recently, for the last six years the arts center has used funding from our own Foundation to present our “Basic Arts” program at another elementary school. This program focuses on literature, with the school hosting our teaching artists and kids learning about a literary story. As a finale, the students are brought to the arts center to see the story performed live on the stage of one of our theaters, followed by talk-back and Q&A with the actors and director.

As we saw the results of these two programs and the benefits they bring to underserved children, we committed to hiring a full-time Arts Education Outreach Coordinator to really move things into high gear and create other partnerships.

Under her direction, we began a Creative Aging Program that brings a visual artist and a dance artist to assisted living facilities to work with ambulatory seniors, as well as a group of seniors afflicted with dementia; the Culture Connect Program, which provides free theater tickets to area schools so their students can attend performances, participatory activities, workshops, literature, and live artist demonstrations; and a comprehensive Jazz A to Z Program that uses the National Endowment for the Arts’s Jazz Curriculum as a guide to provide students opportunities to improvise, analyze, synthesize, engage in group collaborations, develop an individual voice, and broaden cultural perspectives—all through the uniquely American medium of jazz.

Two weeks ago the Arts Education Council at Americans for the Arts and the arts education community at-large lost a tremendously talented artist, educator, and advocate in Alyx Kellington. She passed away on July 29, 2012 near Palm Beach, FL, leaving behind an incredible career in the arts and many friends.

As the news of her death begins to settle in for so many of us, I’ve been reflecting on my last experience being in Alyx’s presence and have been asked by the Arts Education Council to share this story with you as our lasting tribute.

A few of us were fortunate to have spent 2012 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Antonio with Alyx—she and I were hotel roommates. That first evening together we hung out at a restaurant where an amazing Dixie Land style band was playing. She spoke of her rich and diverse experience with music growing up in Austin, TX and was quite fortunate to have been exposed to such an array of musical talent at an early age.

Laura Zucker

Arts for All staff can attest to the fact that the capacity to be adaptable, the knack to be nimble, is a key to continued success.

Following the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, arts education in Los Angeles County’s 81 school districts began to deteriorate to varying degrees. In the late 1990s a coalition of L.A. county arts leaders and advocates met to discuss problems, such as arts education, that could be addressed only by organizations working together. One result was Arts for All, formed as a public-private partnership in 2002 to empower school districts to build infrastructures for arts education and integrate arts into the core curriculum.

Now Arts for All is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a network of more than 100 partners including school districts, artists, arts and education organizations, corporations and foundations.

There is a shared belief in laying a strong foundation for arts education in the school districts and building their capacity to deliver arts education. The approach, which is now being adopted by others across the country, is to create a plan for the long term, collaboratively and systemically across Los Angeles County.

In the world of arts education, one size does not fit all. There is a tremendous variation in the level and quality of arts education within schools and districts across the county. The Arts for All   staff  has learned to customize programs to meet the needs at hand within distinct districts.

Sofia Klatzker, who directs grants programs for the LA County Arts Commission, is a ten-year veteran of Arts for All. She says that even though no two districts are alike, staff discovered that most district leaders believe that the arts are important to the core curriculum. “We do not have to sell the idea of arts ed per se,” says Klatzker. “We have to promote implementation.”

Throughout the decade, school district realities have shifted. For example, having a district-level arts coordinator seemed both imperative and realistic at one time. Now it is understood that someone within the district dedicated to coordinating the arts education plan implementation is important, but it can no longer be expected that the person is dedicated to the arts full-time. District level administrators now often wear many hats due to budgetary constraints.

Randy Cohen

This post is one in a series highlighting the Local Arts Index (LAI) by Americans for the Arts. The LAI provides a set of measures to help understand the breadth, depth, and character of the cultural life of a community. It provides county-level data about arts participation, funding, fiscal health, competitiveness, and more. Check out your county and compare it to any of the nation’s 3,143 counties at ArtsIndexUSA.org.

Nearly 50 percent (!) of the indicators in the Local Arts Index are now available for viewing. Haven’t stopped by lately? Take a moment to check out the “Where I Live" page to see what is new, and take a few minutes to see how where you live compares to other communities.

We’ve been releasing indicators in a series of groupings of related subjects, museums and collections-based organizations for instance, and most recently the performing arts.

Newly released this week is a group of arts education measures. And soon we’ll be releasing the ability to generate mini-reports, grouping specific indicators that you may find valuable.

But first the performing arts...There are two windows into the performing arts in these recently released indicators: popular entertainment and the lively arts. How do they describe your community, and how do they compare and contrast to other communities like yours?

Do some members of your community spend their dollars on attending popular entertainment (the national average is $20.43 per capita) and do others also attend the live performing arts? These two do not necessarily conflict and they may well complement each other, so the answer to both questions is very probably “yes.”

There is a long-held practice of associating “active arts participation” with the traditional live arts—ballet, symphony, opera, theater—which are normally produced and presented by nonprofit entities. But we can also gain a sense of local engagement through attendance and expenditures on popular entertainment that includes rock, hip-hop, and country as well as comedy and other forms of stage entertainment.

Dr. Joelle Lien

Like in many other states, arts and education leaders in Utah are concerned that children in elementary schools are not receiving high-quality, regular instruction in the arts. As a result of these concerns, a unique and comprehensive set of arts education collaborations is taking shape in the state.

Due in large part to the visionary leadership and financial support of philanthropist Beverley Taylor Sorenson, partnerships between colleges of fine arts and colleges of education, as well as with the state office of education, school districts, and various arts organizations are thriving and growing at an amazing pace.

As a result of these collaborations, people whose paths may otherwise never have crossed are instead working closely together to ensure that Utah children receive an education that includes high-quality arts learning and art-making experiences.

Building Relationships

Faculty and administrators within and across universities throughout Utah are working together as never before, collaborating in planning, teaching, researching, community engagement, and advocacy. In March, deans of Utah’s colleges of fine arts and university arts educators met for a statewide “Arts Education Summit” to share successes at their respective institutions and to develop strategic goals for expanding and improving elementary arts education.

Out of that meeting came action items that included the development of a “wiki” for comparing arts education curricular requirements across universities, as well as a plan to expand the reach of the summit to include stakeholders in colleges of education. Then, in July, deans of colleges of fine arts and education met to discuss topics based the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities' Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools report.

Topics of discussion included how university arts and education programs can: build collaborations, expand teaching opportunities for the arts in K-12 schools, influence policymakers to reinforce the place of the arts in schools, widen our research focus to include evidence gathering on K-12 arts education, and prepare pre-service teachers to provide high-quality arts instruction in their future classrooms.

Delali Ayivor

There has been much talk lately of what it means to be a “modern woman.”

I am told that I am a millennial, that I am part of a generation, a movement much larger than myself. This may be true for the purposes of the census but on a day-to-day level I am not overly-conscious of myself as a particular type of woman who is part of a particular type of generation. I owe that to my parents, who built a life for my sister and myself that meant that we could decide who we wanted to be, that we could fulfill most of our dreams if we had the ambition.

So this blog post is not about what it means to be a millennial woman because:

1.) I’m less concerned with “having it all” by myself as I am with everyone getting the very least that they deserve (give me a society with truly equal rights for all, then we’ll talk.)

2.) I’m 19-years-old and I cannot speak on behalf of an entire people.

I have refused to do this since third grade when, while becoming friends with the most popular girl in school, I was designated as the emissary to tell some poor girl who had done nothing that “no one” liked her; I’ve strayed away from the crowd mentality ever since.

What this post is about is mentorship.

This has been a pivotal argument in the "modern woman" debate: who does the next generation of women look up to and why? The landscape seems bleak. Those astute enough not to follow the Kardashian life plan seem equally as disinterested in becoming the high-flying corporate woman on the other end of the spectrum. So the millennial generation, my generation, has decided they can go it alone.

Jeff Hawthorne

The Arts & Economic Prosperity IV report comes at an interesting time for Portland as we prepare to launch a campaign for a transformational arts funding measure that’s headed for the November ballot.

If approved by voters in November, a new income tax capped at $35 per person will raise $12 million per year to support arts organizations and arts education in the City of Portland. Specifically, the measure would restore 65 arts specialists in elementary schools and allow our local arts agency to provide general operating support for about 50 leading arts organizations at a rate of at least five percent of their operating budgets. (Our largest organizations currently receive about one percent of their budgets from local public support).

The measure would also help our Regional Arts & Culture Council set up a fund to increase access to arts and culture, specifically within communities of color and underserved neighborhoods.

The Creative Advocacy Network (CAN) is leading this initiative, and even the most recent polls have been strong, earning 75 percent approval of the actual ballot language among likely voters; we are cautiously optimistic about our chances for success.

However, inexplicably, our local newspaper recently published an appallingly ignorant editorial that dismisses the notion of public funding for the arts, and value of arts education in particular. We’re not quite sure what rock they’ve been living under, but we know they don’t represent the opinion of the vast majority of Portland residents. The letter writing campaign to enlighten them has begun! (Thank you, Bob Lynch, for your letter.)

We’ve also done polling to make sure we understand which messages are most likely to resonate with the voters, and we found that economic impact was not very high on the list. The fact that our local arts organizations constitute a $253 million industry, supporting 8,529 full-time equivalent jobs and generating $21 million in state and local government revenue was deemed “persuasive” by slightly less than half of the likely voters we surveyed.

Buddy Palmer

I’m a fortunate community arts executive. I direct an organization, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham, which supports a vibrant ecosystem in the largest city, and cultural capital, of Alabama. Just a few years ago, in a public gathering, our former governor recognized Birmingham’s cultural sector as the region’s second greatest asset, just behind the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the state’s largest employer with a giant, nationally-recognized network of hospital and healthcare resources.

Birmingham lost one nonprofit contemporary art gallery in the recession; however, I am proud to say most of our organizations are being extremely resourceful at doing more with less. As nonprofits, we’re used to it, right?

And I’ve just received great news: the results of our local Arts and Economic Prosperity IV study show a more than 50 percent increase in annual economic impact from the data collected five years ago. We had an 80 percent survey-return rate from our organizations as compared with the national average of 43 percent. So, our cultural leaders are enthusiastic, capable, and determined to demonstrate our value.

We also have some important and encouraging signs as we move forward. The City of Birmingham is in the process of creating its first comprehensive plan in 50 years, and arts and entertainment tactics have been included in the area of "Prosperity and Opportunity" as well as "Housing, Neighborhoods, and Community Renewal."

Perhaps even more significant, "Blueprint Birmingham," a recently published economic-growth-strategy document commissioned by the Birmingham Business Alliance, our regional economic development authority, identifies "Arts, Entertainment, and Tourism" as one of only seven target sectors with the greatest potential for new job creation, retention of existing jobs, and overall wealth creation in the region. This recognition of the cultural sector as an engine for both community and economic development, when coming from unusual suspects, is a sure sign of progress.

Michael R. Gagliardo

Every time the Etowah Youth Orchestra gives a performance, it seems, we get a standing ovation. I think that’s great—I mean, what better way to recognize the accomplishments of our young musicians, right? And it’s not that they don’t deserve the ovation—after all, they work their tails off at every rehearsal to prepare and present the best performances possible. And with young artists, we should always recognize and praise their efforts.

But on the professional level, I’ve been to a number of performances lately where the performance itself has been adequate, at best, and the audience has still recognized the performers by rising to its feet and loudly and enthusiastically heaping praise upon those on stage.

That’s fine, I guess—we’re recognizing the effort, perhaps; but, in terms of assessing the performance, is this really doing our art any favors? Don’t get me wrong—I want my young players to get standing ovations, to be recognized for their efforts, their achievements, and their accomplishments. But only when it is deserved.

I look at it this way—if I gave a performance that was just lukewarm, I wouldn’t want this type of accolade. It almost feels like pity, in a way—like the audience is saying, “Well, it wasn’t that good of a performance, but we should recognize the effort anyway—I’m sure he worked very hard to put that performance together.”

When we assess the arts, we have to be fair. I know, I know—we struggle every day, for funding, for acceptance, for a place in education, for a place in our communities. And it’s so easy to justify everything we do, to laud and praise every effort, in our desire to win the fight and solidify our place in society. But at what price?

2011 Contest Entry: "Finding Solace in Birmingham," Kelly Moore, Sequoyah High School, Grade 12, 16" x 18" charcoal/pastels

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream for America "where people would be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin, where little black boys and black girls would be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Fifty years later, America is no doubt a very different nation than it was in 1963, especially concerning the rights of African-Americans and racial integration. Yet the widening disparity of wealth and deepening social tensions that precipitated the March on Washington are as topical today as they were in the sixties. The underlying conflicts and tensions that erupted in the sixties—conflicts and tensions that had been festering since the founding of our country—remain unresolved.

Inspired by the Declaration of Independence and forged by the Black experience in America, the modern civil rights movement was a philosophy of life designed to address these inconsistencies in American democracy. It was a philosophy of humility and hope, of pragmatism and idealism, and of individualism and the "Beloved Community," indeed a second American revolution, that aspired to integrate the divided soul of the nation and inaugurate a new era of progress and possibility.

Fifty years later, as the nation and the world face daunting social, political, and environmental challenges that demand a "new" paradigm, a new vision, for how we can relate to each other as human beings, the timing could not be better to revisit "The Dream Speech" and the wisdom of the civil rights movement.

THE DREAM@50 is a tribute series in 2012–13 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Including a student art contest (K–12), a world music/dance festival, and video PSAs, THE DREAM@50 is a celebration of creative collaboration in both the civil rights movement and the arts as the foundation for a new paradigm in how we can live together. The goal of THE DREAM@50 Art Contest is to embrace the arts as a vehicle for bringing this history alive for students today in order to clarify the lessons of the past and to empower our students with the tools to make a difference and make the dream a reality.

Sally Gaskill

As it turns out, quite a bit.

Since 2008, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has surveyed graduates of arts training programs—people who received undergraduate and/or graduate arts degrees from colleges and universities as well as diplomas from arts high schools...people who majored in architecture, arts education, creative writing, dance, design, film, fine arts, media arts, music, theater, and more.

To date, SNAAP has collected data from over 50,000 arts graduates of all ages and nationalities. These respondents, as we call them in the survey world, graduated from nearly 250 different educational institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

In a few short years, SNAAP has become what is believed to be the largest database ever assembled about the arts and arts education, as well as the most comprehensive alumni survey conducted in any field.

Recently, we published our latest findings: A Diverse Palette: What Arts Graduates Say About Their Education and Careers. The report provides findings from over 33,000 arts graduates who responded to the online survey last fall.

Our report has attracted media coverage from the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Inside Higher Ed and—we were gawked on gawker.com! My favorite may be Forbes, which compares getting an arts degree with getting a law degree—and recommends that prospective law students consider an arts career instead.

Here are some of the big questions that SNAAP data begin to answer.

1.      Where do arts graduates go?

• First, they are largely employed. Only 4% of SNAAP respondents are unemployed and looking for work, as opposed to the national average of 8.9%.

• 72% have worked as professional artist at some point in their career, and just over half (51%) do so currently.
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Deb Vaughn

Since I started my job 4 ½ years ago, I have been looking for a way to quantify arts education. There are an overwhelming number of models circulating:

Washington State did an invited, online, school principal survey, leveraging the partnership of their Arts Education Research Initiative to elicit responses.

Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming worked with the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) to develop a shared survey instrument, administered in collaboration with the four state offices of education and public instruction.

Communities involved in The Kennedy Center’s Any Given Child initiative have created extensive school-based survey instruments, drawing on the expertise of locally-formed partnerships to create the best instrument and guarantee response rates.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

With over 1,300 public schools in the state, the cost to hire a research firm to design and administer a survey instrument was prohibitive, and every existing survey instrument we looked at needed substantial adaptation to satisfy our stakeholders.

Luckily, two years ago, a graduate student in public policy at University of Oregon, Sarah K. Collins, mentioned to me that her thesis project involved pulling data from the Department of Education to examine access to arts education. The Oregon Arts Commission hired Sarah to produce a state-level summary report of her thesis, which we then published.

While the summary data was useful in tracking overall trends, it wasn’t applicable to most citizens, who wanted to know what the numbers meant for their local school. This demand evolved into what is now the Oregon Arts Commission’s newly launched online arts education database.