Arts Intranet

Kathi R. Levin

Participation in and advocacy for the arts and arts education is a lifetime, persistent agenda that many of us believe is critical to living an educated, reflective, expressive, and complete life.

We are passionate people, often not afraid of sharing what matters to us. After all, the arts are about “making meaning.”

In that effort, sometimes we are so eager to share our beliefs that we fail to maximize the leverage that we might by encouraging learners – both adults and younger students – to articulate why the arts, participating in them as both artists and audience, are at the heart of what they have come to care about as an important part of their complete educational experience.

Thanks to the good work of Americans for the Arts, we actually have a great deal of the data we need about the economic impact of the arts and the 5.7 million jobs that are in place due to the arts.

Can you really make a living as an artist, or even as someone working behind the scenes in the governance and management of the arts and arts organizations?   

In just under four weeks, advocates from all across the nation will come together in Washington, DC, to engage in a discussion with their colleagues and elected officials about the course of arts funding at the federal, state, and local levels.

While the event takes place at roughly the same time each year, advocates will have the unique opportunity of speaking with their members of Congress while two budget debates are occurring. The government is still deadlocked on a solution that can permanently resolve the budget for Fiscal Year 2011, while simultaneously trying to approve a budget for Fiscal Year 2012.  

Joan Weber

As part of my pledge to Testify for Arts Education, I showed up at the Carroll County (MD) Board of Education meeting on March 9.

The room was full, as the board had recently released its preliminary budget. There were many people in the room who were there to protest cuts to school staffs, including nurse’s aids, teaching assistants and paraprofessionals.

They all wore printed labels saying “Together We Can Make a Difference.” They also all wore band-aids because, as they said, “Our hearts are broken.”

I was worried. I hadn’t brought anyone with me. (Note to self: Next time, bring people with me.)

I was sure that all these people would use the “Citizen Participation” time and my message of arts education would be lost. But, the agenda of the board was clearly divided between citizen participation and employee groups.

There were only two names on the Citizen Participation speakers’ list: mine and the chair of a parents’ group. (Note to self: Next time, bring lots of people with me.)

When my name was called, I went to the podium and delivered my prepared remarks. I spoke about an expanded definition of arts education, one in which the school system recognized the importance of arts specialists, teaching artists, and arts institutions.    

Kathi R. Levin

In today’s struggling economy, there is renewed emphasis on the importance of creativity and innovation. Most of us in the arts automatically think of creativity and innovation as essential to our “brand” and they are.

But, “ownership” of creativity and innovation in today’s evolving worlds of social media communication, a shifting economy, and the global marketplace also feels like “code” for successful entrepreneurism.

In the education sector, where there is a clear federal emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) creativity and innovation relate to these fields, with examples of American ingenuity drawn from NASA, the automotive industry, and other technological developments of the 20th century. We cannot be sure that when people speak about creativity and innovation that they have even considered, let alone are thinking about, the arts.

According to a 2008 report from the Conference Board, there is overwhelming consensus from superintendents (98 percent) and corporate leaders (96 percent) that “creativity is of increasing importance to the U.S. workforce.” Of those corporate respondents looking for creative people, 85 percent said they were having difficulty finding qualified applicants with the creative characteristics they desired.

Clayton Lord

There are a lot of posts coming in about advocacy and arts education, and many of them are both hopeful and cautious about what's happening now in the world.

It's good to see such optimism, especially given that we face mighty opposition to the very basic value of what we do and make, but it seems to fly against what I see as a burgeoning reality in America.

Starting in the mid 1980s, on the tail of the passage of Prop 13 in California, the public at large started to make a demonstrable shift away from valuing the arts.

The number of eighteen-year-olds claiming to have received any arts education has declined, and precipitously, every year since 1985.

This isn't new info, and it probably has been rehashed better than I could in many other blogs across the ether, but while we sit here taking pride in our new data on our value, we are up against a mightily fractured world being run by a series of generations who have, by and large, had little or no sustained education in (or using) the arts, and who consequently are acting like people that don't care about a looming loss simply because that loss has never been personally felt.

It's a hard place to find ourselves in, a shrinking minority in a country with very little love for something that has been framed (by both them and us) as a luxury, a "want" instead of a "need."    

Kim Dabbs

I have to be honest. I used to be one of those people in my car when driving by a runner, would always grumble, “that person sure is crazy.”

I used to wonder why someone would torture themselves in the Michigan cold, or the humidity that creeps up in August every year.

I used to wonder why someone would willingly subject their body to the miles of pounding on the pavement step after step.

It was my associate director at Michigan Youth Arts that changed all of that for me.

She is a runner and our organization decided to launch a 5k run as a fundraiser in the fall of 2009. During our first Arts in Motion event, I helped during the registration while watching all of these committed runners come out in the frost covered the grass crunching under their shoes to raise money for our organization.

This year I decided I had better step it up and actually RUN for the arts. I began a ten week training program and on October 10, 2010, I ran and completed my first 5k.    

Field trip.  Those two words were music to my ears when I was in school, as they probably still are to most kids who are lucky enough to hear them these days.  For me it meant not only getting away from the monotony of the school day, but more often than not getting to experience something new and different: a museum, a musical performance, a zoo, etc.  But as most people are all too familiar with these days, budgets for education are being slashed across the country.  I have a feeling those two magical words are being heard less and less as each year passes.

With teachers in the arts facing layoffs across the country (check out these examples in New York and Chicago), it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ensure students are getting their fair share of the arts, and undoubtedly that means field trips centered around the arts are going out the window.  While we are advocating for school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and the federal government to not only keep arts education funding, but increase it, teachers are forced to get creative (luckily they had an arts education, right?) with exposing their students to the arts.

Tim Mikulski

Although I successfully avoided using Twitter for a while after it was first introduced to the world. I figured that I didn't need another time suck added to my life beyond Gmail and Facebook.

While that is still probably true, I also discovered a better use of Twitter than just reading the crazy Tweets of Kanye West. It actually helps me do my job.

When I moved over to become arts education program manager at Americans for the Arts, I brought along our weekly newsletter, Arts Watch, with me to the new position.

I already had too many Google News alerts and also have a Post-It with 12 search phrases that I use each week to collect information that goes into that publication.

What I didn't realize is that Twitter can be used in a way that I would never have thought of until a friend of a coworker mentioned it to me - it's a news gathering system.

By "following" other arts and arts education organizations, practitioners, managers, etc., you end up having information delivered to your feed throughout the day.    

Richard Kessler

Tim Mikulski, who organized this blog salon, suggested topics for us to consider for the salon and it got me to thinking that since I blog a lot about issues, I would love to post a lesson of all things.

So, here’s one that I carry around with me wherever I go, although I don’t get to use it very much these days.

I hope you won’t mind if I skip the alignment with standards and some of the other traditional formats for curricula. I have formal versions of this lesson somewhere or another, but for the salon, I did a quick write-up from memory. 

Deb Vaughn

One of the big pieces of my job as a state arts education coordinator is to, well, coordinate.

And it’s one thing to bring people together face-to-face (although there are certainly challenges: travel expenses, coordinating schedules, finding an agreeable geographic location, how much food to order from the caterer, etc.).

But it’s another thing entirely to connect people when they can’t meet face to face.

Three years ago, the Oregon Arts Commission started convening a yearly Arts Education Congress. The first gathering took place right after the 2008 general election, when the spirit of grassroots political action was high.

We invited people from all sides of the arts education Venn diagram to serve as voluntary delegates at this event, looking forward to dialogue with people who dipped their toes in the arts education pool from all different angles.

Merryl Goldberg

Yup, I’m the Chair of all the Visual and Performing Arts at California State University San Marcos, and I go to a boxing gym three to four times a week.

I say this as if it was a confession, and when I do say this out loud, I get the most curious looks. I would be last person on earth you would imagine as a boxer.

First off, I’m pretty tiny – almost 5’1” (!).

And, I’m over 50, not the profile one imagines for a boxer:  Ms. teeny tiny almost-senior-citizen, artsy administrator wearing wraps, gloves, and beating the heck out of an innocent bag.  But, I love it - both the surprise of identifying as one who boxes, and the actual act of boxing.

Alright, this is how it happened.  

Kathi R. Levin

After years of having the arts included as a core subject in federal policy, the arts education community is faced with adapting to a new approach to positioning the arts in the curriculum.

Federal policy has not abandoned the arts as a core subject – at least not yet.

But the arts are now clustered within the concept of having a “well-rounded” education (or the well-rounded curriculum).

For U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a “well-rounded” education or curriculum means that in addition to math, science, and language arts – we need to make sure that students have the arts, foreign language, history and civics, financial literacy, and environmental education.

Recently, Duncan issued guidance to governors in the form of a letter and several white papers to explain how the states can adapt to the economic realities of shrinking budgets without cutting various aspects of education.

Tim Mikulski

I'm always talking about the importance of arts and arts education advocacy since my background is in the political world, but I know that it can be intimidating to talk to a local board of education member, local legislator, or state representative - let alone a U.S. Senator or Congressperson.

While we try to make the latter easier thanks to a day-long training session before National Arts Advocacy Day and offer other advocacy resources such as our current Testify on Behalf of Arts Education campaign, those methods aren't universal solutions.

For this reason, I often collect stories about local efforts to fight for arts education (and the arts in general) in case anyone ever wants other advocacy alternatives.

It just so happens that last week, there were three different types of advocacy efforts going on in three areas of the country - Reading, PA; Melrose, MA; and, San Diego, CA.

Marete Wester

When it comes to advocating for arts education, I think we are in the “best of the best”—and the “worst of the worst”—of times.

I’ll start with the "worst of the worst."

The political environment for education is more hostile and corrosive than ever before.

The economy has not rebounded enough to help stave off what the loss of federal education funds to the states through the 2010 stimulus package will mean to local districts. Loss of teachers and programs are not just happening in the arts—they will happen system and subject-wide.

One recent example is the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) to provide funds for FY 2011 (current year) for two weeks to avoid a federal government shutdown. The two weeks is up on Friday.

The CR actually makes a $4 billion cut in domestic spending, including a number of federal education programs—such as Teach for America.  Not surprisingly, among these programs designated for cuts is the $40 million Arts in Education program for which we advocate every year.

Rachel Evans

I wish I had counted how many people said to me over the last seven years that I need to teach the pre-service theatre educators in my classes to be arts education advocates.

On one hand, it’s exciting to realize that the field has progressed to the point that it recognizes advocacy as a necessary part of the student-teaching experience. On the other hand, crafting an identity as an advocate and adopting an advocacy agenda--that’s quite a bit of pressure on the young educator.

Or so I thought.

I chose to start small. The students in Kean University’s Topics in Theatre Education class began by reviewing advocacy sections on the websites of various service organizations.

We looked at the materials I saved from Arts Advocacy Day 2010 and we watched the video ad for 2011’s gathering.

I spoke as passionately as I could about the lasting effects last year’s AAD experience had on me: building my convictions and motivating me to find my own voice as an advocate for the arts.

Rob Schultz

One of the tried-and-true methods for advocating government funding for arts education is to tell a story about the positive impact of the arts on an individual. If the story can convey transformative change in that individual, the more powerful the message will be.

Well, here is one story.

It may not be Hollywood blockbuster material, but perhaps some can relate.

Several decades ago, an individual was growing up in a 1960’s suburban, middle-class American neighborhood and living a relatively mundane and somewhat sheltered life.

Afflicted with what would today be diagnosed as ADHD, this individual had difficulty in school, especially high school.

Clayton Lord

Last week, arts advocate Arlene Goldbard spoke at the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations conference in Austin. Goldbard believes we need to start using a more empowered (and less-numbers-based) vocabulary for arguing for the value of the arts. At one point she said this:

"The best argument for arts education is that children today practice endlessly interacting with machines, developing a certain type of cognitive facility. But without the opportunity that arts education affords to face human stories in all their diversity and particularity, to experience emotional responses in a safe space and rehearse one's reactions, to feel compassion and imagine alternative worlds, their emotional and moral development will never keep pace."

Later, she noted:

"Students today are preparing for jobs and social roles that have not even been imagined yet. They cannot be trained in the narrow sense for jobs that do not yet exist."

Goldbard argued that arts education, with its ability to instill social skills, empathy, intellectual development, critical thinking, etc., would allow students today more flexibility as those as-yet-unknown jobs and roles revealed themselves over time.

Merryl Goldberg

The film Race to Nowhere is a provocative entrance into a conversation about educational reform and, in my role as Chair and Professor of the Visual and Performing Arts as California State University San Marcos, I've been invited by local PTAs to comment on the film and begin a dialogue with teachers, parents, and school administrators.

I've created a top ten list in response to the film and to what I see as core needs in schools. In embarking on a path to student success, I suggest reinvigorating curriculum development and policy with the following:

1.    Wonder – Wonder sets the stage for learning. Children (indeed all of us) have an innate ability to imagine and create – all of which starts with wonder. Scientists, mathematicians, and artists are wonderful role models for the act of wondering and the arts cultivate wonder – engaging us, both as creators and as audience members.

Victoria Plettner-Saunders

As Chair of the Arts Education Council of Americans for the Arts, I’d like to welcome you to the first Arts Education Blog Salon of 2011.

There are always so many things to learn from our colleagues as we share blog posts and commentary on a particular theme for one full week.

I hope you have time to return to the Salon several times throughout the week (and again after it ends on Friday) and post your own thoughts or questions as they arise.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a little bit about the Arts Education Council and what our agenda for 2011 looks like.

This past January, the council met to plan its annual agenda. With a renewed focus on supporting members at the local level, we developed a rather ambitious set of activities for the year around five main themes (some of which were the result of the council’s Trends Report that has been developed over the past two years).  

Kristy Callaway

My southern heritage speaks, “I’m not one to talk, but…” then proceeds to the insult and ends with “…bless their heart.”

What I know for sure is that the scientific method should be trusted and I like micro advocacy. Our ancestors could mark on cave walls, create flutes from bones, and push their humanity forward through oral and physical traditions, mostly improving their lot along the way. We have been governed by scientific methodology since we hungrily poked sticks in anthills a million years ago.

Today, the wiggling things are us.

What is at stake?

Our legacy and future humanity!

In a recent op-ed piece to The Washington Post, Bill Gates detailed research findings for student achievement. The single most decisive factor is excellent teaching. And learning can only happen in the third space between teacher and student.

Marete Wester

I don’t have a Twitter account. I’m not morally opposed to it, or taking an anti-technology political stance—I’m merely a social media “slow adapter.” Since it’s one of those things I know it will take me a while to learn, it’s not high on my priority “to do’s”—at least for now.

Which is why I’m always amazed when a colleague emailed me that I’ve been quoted on Twitter, as I was recently speaking on a panel at the Face to Face conference hosted by the Arts in Education Roundtable in New York City (Feb 22 & 23).

The Face to Face conference had several hundred attendees, with a significant number of first-timers. While many of the panels were thoughtfully focused on building skills and improving practice in delivering solid learning in the arts, others were targeted towards advocacy and making the case.

The comment that made the tweet was something I said as a member of the Arts Education Advocacy panel moderated by Doug Israel of the Center for Arts Education, featuring NYC Councilman Robert Jackson and NYS State Alliance for Arts Education Executive Director Jeremy Johannesen.

In response to a question about how we would describe the current environment for arts education from our respective vantage points at the local, state, and national level, I apparently said something tweet-able.

Less than a week ago, something happened in Chicago that hadn’t happened in more than 20 years -- we had a race for mayor … without Richard M. Daley on the ballot!

I know many cities and towns elect a new mayor -- or at least seriously consider it -- every four years. But the last time we voted for a mayor who wasn’t “Da Mare” was in the 1980s.

Whether the election was actually “competitive,” well, that’s debatable. With Rahm Emanuel, one of six candidates, capturing 55 percent of the vote, the Chicago Sun-Times called the election a “rahmp!” (Get it?!) Emanuel needed “50 percent plus one” to avoid a run-off with the next highest vote-getter.

What will the election of Rahm Emanuel mean for the arts and arts education in Chicago?