“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” As we reflect on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week, I was reminded of this one of many, but not often cited, quotes by Dr. King.

Recently, the Arts Education Advisory Council of Americans for the Arts met for its midwinter meeting in Los Angeles. We spent much of our time discussing equity and the need for access to the arts for all students, pre-K through high school. We took a tour of the Colburn School, an outstanding music conservatory with numerous community engagement programs. The mission of the Colburn School is to admit students who have tremendous artistic promise and provide them with full tuition, including room and board, so that they can focus solely on their musical careers.

Meredith Frazier Britt

I am a city planner who can’t stay away from public art. I just finished my capstone project for my master’s in city and regional planning at Georgia Tech, and true to form, I studied commonalities between public art and planning goals in the Atlanta region.

My interest in public art began with art history in college. I trace it to a flashbulb memory of a beloved professor snapping to a slide of Claes Oldenburg’s imagined (but never constructed) intersection-blocking monument in New York City. I loved that this piece would so fully obstruct the activity of city life, interrupting our regular routes of walking and driving, imposing its message on our thoughts.

Stephanie Milling

In thinking about this week’s blog post, I am inspired by the act of advocacy. At National Arts Advocacy Day  last month, arts advocates from all over the nation poured onto Capitol Hill to describe how the arts benefits the economy, culture, education, and healthcare. In an effort to procure support for the upcoming fiscal year, our carefully crafted message communicated how the arts not only enrich but exist as a necessity within the lives of Americans.

While arming ourselves with facts and figures provided by Americans for the Arts to state our case, a colleague of mine who works for the City of Mauldin Cultural Center  proposed that we describe a day without the arts to adequately articulate the essential role of the arts in our lives. While he was not seriously considering this approach in our appointments on Capitol Hill, he was serious about how the gravity of the message could help illustrate—well not illustrate because the arts would not exist—how the arts are present all around us.

Vans Custom Culture 2013 Winning pair of shoes, designed by Lakeridge High School; Lake Oswego, Oregon

Americans for the Arts is excited to be partnering again with VANS in 2014 for the Vans Custom Culture competition, a national shoe customization contest where high schools from all over the United States compete for a chance to win money for their art programs.

Since 2010, youth-targeted brand Vans has been encouraging high school students across the United States to embrace their creativity.  The Vans Custom Culture competition offers students a fresh perspective on art and offers an outlet for self expression through art, fashion, and design through this unique contest and multimedia exhibit.  During this contest, high school students from participating schools design shoes that fit within a particular theme representing Vans lifestyle.  The $50,000 award is granted to the winning school to support its art program.

The 2013 Vans Customs Culture winner of the $50,000 grand prize was Lakeridge High School of Lake Oswego, Oregon.  This winning school was chosen on June 11, 2013 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The top 5 finalist school’s shoe designs were on display at the museum for the panel of judges, which included actress Emma Roberts, designer Timo Weiland, reality star-turned-designer Whitney Port, artist Christian Jacobs and skateboarder Steve Caballero.  In addition to the grand prize, $20,000 was donated by Vans and Americans for the Arts to ten more schools across country to advance their art education programs.

The school year is still new, so it’s a great time to look ahead and plan ahead. Remember that your academic and performing or visual arts choices in high school should serve your longer-term goals as you prepare for college and beyond. Keep in mind that no matter what decisions you’ve made, or are about to make, you may want to refine your selections as you develop and grow. Stay focused, and at the same time, stay open to exploring new areas at all times!

Senior Arts Students — Get guidance, plan auditions, prep portfolios. Stay on track with admissions requirements by working with your guidance counselor. Let your counselor know where you want transcripts, score reports, and letters sent, and provide any necessary forms much earlier than the actual deadlines so your counselor will have time to send in the forms. Now you can finalize your audition material or portfolio pieces to best reflect your skills.

Masha Raj

September is the beginning of a new academic year for students, parents, and teachers - and also when we announce our new season of arts education initiatives and competitions!

This fall we are partnering again with KRIS Wine for the fourth annual Art of Education program.  KRIS, a brand of Winebow, Inc., will award 16 schools in the United States a total of $25,000 in grants to improve academic achievement through quality arts education.  As more than half of the states continue to cut arts education budgets, every extra dollar towards arts education from our corporate partners like KRIS Wine helps.

Last fall, consumers and arts advocates also selected 16 schools during KRIS Wine’s Art of Education contest.  $25,000 was traditionally disseminated to winning schools in various states, ranging from California to New York and all over the country.  KRIS Wine’s investment has made all the difference for the following top winners:

Brunswick Acres; Brunswick, NJ

Brunswick Acres was the top awarded school in the KRIS wine Art of Education program.  The Art of Education experience has helped to bring the entire school together while they competed for the winning prize, inspiring a sense of community that endured throughout the school year.  “I am blessed to be able to work with amazing students, parents, and colleagues who were so dedicated to helping us win this grant,” said art teacher Suzanne Tiedemann. “This donation from KRIS Wine will go a long way in helping supplement our significantly cut art budget for years to come.”

With the $5,000 award, the school purchased four brand new iPads for the arts program, which students now utilize to experiment with art in digital space.  The iPads help Brunswick Acres to meet and successfully exceed their 21^st century learning requirements from their district.  Additionally the school purchased a color printer for the school community to use as well as supplementary art supplies that otherwise could not have been afforded.

For over 30 years as a K-12 English & Theater teacher, I have witnessed how the arts have impacted the lives of so many people, young and old. The stories and research are endless, and yet the arts continue to be cut from school curriculums across the nation.  Despite arts advocacy groups’ efforts to prevent this decline, the budgetary solution remains to be that the arts are perceived as extra-curricular and disposable.

This is nothing farther from the truth: the arts challenge us to not only dare but also explore the myriad of possibilities of WHAT IF…

Upset over the slashing of arts programs in schools I decided to do something about it. I started First Online With Fran to highlight ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things to make the arts the fabric of our existence. Utilizing testimonials, videos, and interviews First on Line with Fran serves to be the sounding board to let the world know that, “We’re angry as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

For my most recent episode, I got a bunch of kids from Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School and asked them to respond to the statement:  The Arts are extra-curricular and disposable.

Please take 6 minutes and listen to what they have to say...

This is where my passion lies, and this is my way of raising awareness and advocating for the arts included in education.

Kristen Engebretsen

“If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves...We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” ~ from A Nation at Risk

Last Friday I attended an event at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute looking at the impact of the report released back in 1983, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform. According to the Fordham Institute’s website:

“Thirty years ago, A Nation at Risk was released to a surprised country. Suddenly, Americans woke up to learn that SAT scores were plummeting and children were learning a lot less than before. This report became a turning point in modern U.S. education history and marked the beginning of a new focus on excellence, achievement, and results.”

The report language itself called for many sensible reforms, including more instructional time, higher standards for courses and content, stringent high school graduation requirements, and demanding college entrance requirements.

But the sound bite that came out of the report was that we have a “desperate need for increased support for the teaching of mathematics and science.” And, "We are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate."

Jamie Kasper

Imagine a fast-growing, increasingly diverse school district with approximately 2,700 students in grades K–12, located 12 miles from the downtown area of a city. The district currently consists of three buildings: an elementary school (grades K–4), a middle school (grades 6–8), and a high school (grades 9–12). Also imagine the following:

• Because of the growing population, the district is building a new facility for grades 3-5 that will open in the 2013–2014 school year. This building will have a STEAM focus.

• In addition to visual arts and music, students in the elementary school also participate in an Arts Alive class. Arts Alive is a performing arts class that focuses on storytelling; students employ dance, music, and theatre to tell and create stories. Students often comment that they wish Arts Alive would continue into the middle school because they learn so much in elementary school.

• The administrative team—including the superintendent and other central office staff; building leadership; heads of transportation, food service, and grounds; and other leaders—has spent its last three summer leadership retreats at local arts and cultural facilities, engaged in creative arts-based learning with staff from those facilities.

• The middle school visual arts teacher took it upon herself a few years ago to attend a robotics workshop at a local university. With the help of staff from a special robotics program at the university, she now engages her middle school students in designing, creating, and programming kinetic sculptures that use the elements and principles of design.
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Raymond Tymas-Jones

Arts education in our society sometimes gets a bad rap. When I’m speaking with potential students and their families I’m frequently asked questions such as: What do people actually do with a degree from the College of Fine Arts? What kind of jobs do they get? How much money do they make?

These are all valid questions, but the answers are often more complicated than the inquirers desire. I often wonder whether or not these are the most important questions for people who are passionate about studying and creating art.

The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) is an organization designed to enhance the impact of arts-school education. To do this, SNAAP partners with degree-granting institutions to administer an annual online survey to their arts alumni. The information from the survey provides important insight as to how artists develop in this country, help identify the factors needed to better connect arts training to artistic careers and allow education institutions, researchers and arts leaders to look at the systemic factors that helped or hindered the career paths of alumni.

SNAAP defines “the arts” and “the arts alumni” broadly, to include the fields of performance, design, architecture, creative writing, film, media arts, illustration, and the fine arts. The survey population includes alumni from undergraduate programs, graduate programs, and arts-focused high schools.

Rafael Otto

PDX, Stumptown, the City of Roses, Portlandia, Bridgetown. All of these offer a glimpse into my “second-tier,” west coast city—Portland, OR—nestled between majestic Mt. Hood and the brisk and rugged Pacific coast.

After four years away I’m back with a fresh perspective, a renewed commitment to the arts, and a job that gives me an unparalleled perspective into the world of education across the country.

I also have a vested interest in the educational system here—my daughter entered kindergarten last September. She is now a student in the Portland Public School District, Oregon’s largest district, in a state that has the fourth-worst graduation rate in the country.

As a father, I cringe at stats like that. I worry about the quality of her education, especially when we emphasize assessment and test scores over creativity and collaboration.

As a writer and researcher working in education, I know we can do better.

As an artist, I see that Portland’s system of education has failed to harness the very best of Portland’s innovative and creative talent.

Ron Jones

There seems to be an unstated assumption that any change in how the arts are utilized in early childhood education requires that the focus be on influencing and shaping the pedagogy of the teachers who currently work directly with this age group. That seems like a practical strategy, but we all know how challenging it is to initiate change.

I would submit that there is another avenue, a quicker and more effective path for accomplishing our goals with early childhood.

This avenue is at least as powerful as any other strategy advocated and, at its best, may be the most efficient way to implement beneficial change—positioning the arts as central to and essential for early childhood education.

I would argue that it is easier and faster to shape the philosophy and ensure a new approach to pedagogy when the focus is education majors within our colleges and universities.

The resistance to change evidenced in many experienced educators, be they teachers or principals, makes it difficult for me to believe that we can witness significant influence over what happens; rather, or at least at the same time, we must marshal the energy, enthusiasm, and commitment of soon-to-be teachers. Harnessing that energy will yield positive results in just a few short years. We must create a transition that permeates every classroom, that impacts every student, and that is advanced by every educator. 

With the smell of coffee brewing and waffles toasting, I peer into my girls' art studio and see two preschoolers happily invested in the processes of drawing flowers and painting landscapes.

My two-year old dips her brush delicately into a bowl of water and then fills her brush with paint. The brush dances across the page and I hear her chatting about rainbows and a blue-green sky. My four-year-old fills her page with intricate illustrations of imaginative flowers and spirals.

We have a morning ritual of making, and it's almost always process-driven. I do everything I can to set up an invitation to create—on this Spring morning the table was covered with paper, a jar of markers, and watercolors—and then I'll step back to allow my children to find their creative voices. This is process-oriented art: open-ended, exploratory, individual, and one-of-a-kind. 

Susan Harris MacKay

Every day, in every aspect of curriculum, Opal School students are invited to work with the arts to express their interpretations and growing relationships with the world around them.

Inspired by the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, Opal School began 12 years ago with the intention to pursue the question: What are the implications of these approaches for the American Public Elementary School?

Carlina Rinaldi, has written, “We are all researchers of the meaning of life. Yet it is possible to destroy this attitude of the child with our quick answers and our certainty.”

We ask ourselves daily: What assumptions need to shift if we are to sustain curiosity and preserve this attitude of research? What would school look like if it intended to promote the development of the kind of healthy brain architecture our citizens need to support a healthy planet and democracy?

What happens if we withhold quick answers? What relationships become visible? What tools and strategies become of value?

In TED prize winner, Sugata Mitra’s recent talk, we hear him ask similar questions. While I agree with his equation/response to these questions: broadband + collaboration + encouragement, my experience tells me he is missing a vital part: the arts. 

Lynne Kingsley

Picture it: you bring Tyler, a nine-month-old infant, to sit through a high-quality production of “James and the Giant Peach.” To expect the same deliciously wide-eyed and captivated response as his seven-year-old sister is nonsensical.

Would we say, then, that baby Tyler, in his most formative years, is not entitled to the same level of quality artistic experiences (and benefits that go along with them) as other members of his family simply because his intake mechanisms are less developed therefore more reliant on senses than words and linear thought?

It was only in the last 10 years did Theatre for the Very Young (TVY or Baby Theatre, or Theatre for Early Years) become a popular practice in the United States. Our comrades in Europe began researching and practicing this work roughly 25 years ago. And, I was surprised to learn from Manon van de Water’s book, Theatre, Youth and Culture: a Critical and Historical Exploration, that part of it was a response to a different perception of the very young as “human beings” and not “human becomings” who had the right to art and leisure as stipulated in the UNESCO Convention on the Rights of a Child.

Not only is experiencing arts a human right, but also it’s incredibly beneficial to them. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, dramatic play is important in helping young children express themselves and gain understanding of different societal roles.

Louise J. Corwin

Art has traditionally been an important part of early childhood programs. The arts in early childhood education is spontaneous, creative play—drawing, painting, self-expression, singing, playing music, dancing, storytelling, and role playing.

Pre-school age children love the arts because that is what they do naturally. The arts engage all the senses and kinesthetic, auditory, and visual modalities. When parents, early educators and early childhood teachers engage and encourage children in the arts on a regular basis early in life, they help lay the foundation for successful learning and school success. The Early Years Matter!

In early childhood vernacular, the arts include children’s active participation in a variety of experiences—dance, drama, fine arts, and music. These activities allow them to express themselves through the arts and appreciate what they observe.

To be ready for school, children need to reach core milestones and master key skills and abilities in seven domains of learning including the arts.

Important questions to ask include:

• What skills in the arts do young children need?
• Why are the arts important to school success?
• How can parents support the arts? 
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Michael R. Gagliardo

When I was a sophomore in high school, my band director arranged for me to audition for the Alton Municipal Band. I had no idea what a big deal this was. It was my first professional gig. I was going to get paid to play the trumpet. I was nervous, and excited, and more than a little intimidated.

I showed up for my first rehearsal and was seated in the section playing third trumpet. I was disappointed at the seating results, but hey, it was a start.

My stand partner was a man named John Mitchell. He was at least 70. I was 16. He came in and unpacked an old, worn cornet.

I was sitting there with a shiny new Bach trumpet, thinking “who is this guy and what am I doing sitting down here next to him?”

As the season began, we started to talk. He was a nice old guy—and if I remember correctly (and I hope I do, in honor of John’s memory) he had served in the military, and then gone on to marry, raise a family, work hard, and live a good life.

I can’t remember where he learned to play the cornet—if it was in school, or in the military. I just remember that during all that time when he was taking care of his family and building a life for them, he set his cornet aside. He probably put it in a closet where it gathered dust for years—even decades. And then one day, when his kids were grown and he had retired, he took it out again.