Americans for the Arts

Robert L. Lynch

 

It is widely accepted across the country that the arts are a significant part of a quality education. As part of the core, they provide America’s students with essential skills and knowledge needed to be productive college and career ready citizens. In May 2013, I attended a summit with leaders from 12 other arts and education advocacy organizations to define what quality arts education looks like at the local level, encourage partnerships, and call on organizations and individuals to actively support and promote the following points of intersection in our field. We came up with some basic agreements:

• Development of policies and resources for arts education.
• Access to arts education for all students.
• Collaboration between school-based arts educators, other subject area teachers, and community-based artists and arts educators.
• Long-term advocacy partnership between all providers of arts education.

In a time when education reform is at the helm of change and current practices are being revised, we felt that it was important to articulate the purpose and value of arts education in the balanced curriculum of all students. We assert its place as a core academic subject area and detail how sequential arts learning can be supported by rigorous national standards and assessments.

Dan Trahey

My colleague, educator, lecturer, and etymologist, Eric Booth, defines a teaching artist as “a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills, curiosities, and sensibilities of an educator, who can effectively engage a wide range of people in learning experiences in, through, and about the arts.”

At the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s OrchKids program we define our staff as Teaching Artists and look for three qualities:

1. Effective Pedagogy

2. High Level Artistry

3. Ability to ADVOCATE for the musical art form.

My mission in the following paragraphs is to create a series of arguments that may lead to other questions growing out of the query - “Are universities doing enough to train performers to be Teaching Artists?”

Kelby McIntyre Martinez

“We dance, sing, and tell stories too, you know? And we are pretty good at it,” Merlene age 12 at the time, informed me as I was finishing up my theatre and dance class with the middle school boys. From that point on, the Theatre and Dance Education Program at the Hartland Partnership Center took off.

My name is Kelby McIntyre-Martinez and I am the Director of the Theatre and Dance Education Program at the University of Utah Hartland Partnership Center in Salt Lake City.  Since 2008, I have had the privilege of working with an amazingly diverse population that encompasses non-native English speaking youth from immigrant and refugee backgrounds.

The Hartland Partnership Center is part of an expanded effort by the University of Utah toward civic engagement—a recognition that active collaboration between University and community groups can enhance learning, teaching, and research. In addition, University/community partnerships bring the strength of combined resources to bear on urban issues. The key to Hartland Partnership Center’s success is sustainability and reciprocity. This model works because the resources fit the reality and a culture of reciprocal sharing and learning permeates the center. The mission of the Hartland Partnership Center provides space for a broad range of campus-community partnership activities. Bringing these activities to Hartland residents helps equip them with all the tools and resources needed to more fully participate in the broader Salt Lake community, including the performing arts.

Erin Gough

One of the wonderful things about the annual Americans for the Arts' Annual Convention is that the discussions held there reverberate beyond the days of the conference and beyond the people who were able to participate in person. As someone who was unable to attend, I was so pleased to be able read about, and dig into, some of the dialogues that were held last month in Nashville.

My interest was piqued when I read Devon Smith’s piece on the fate of failing arts organizations. She dives into a debate session held at convention on the controversial but essential argument that as an arts community, we too often distribute scare resources to keep struggling organizations on life-support when it may be more beneficial for the arts ecosystem as a whole to let them die gracefully.

Jonathan Herman

Young people have immense energy and a unique capacity to imagine, experiment, and take positive risks. But opportunities for them to develop their creativity and exercise these valuable qualities are in many cases limited.

Without opportunities to realize their own creative capacities, and thereby engage in the social and civic processes that directly affect their lives, young people are “at risk” of not realizing their own potential. And as a result our communities forgo the benefit of young people’s creativity, commitment, and leadership.

In an age of rapidly changing economic, social, technological, and environmental challenges (just to name a few), we need the talents of young people to help us innovate, renew, and build a brighter future.

Emma Leggat

I have the pleasure of serving as StubHub’s Head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and in September 2012, had a life-changing opportunity to visit New Orleans with a special mission.

New Orleans was to host Super Bowl XLVIII, meaning it would also be the site of StubHub’s annual Super Bowl Pregame Bash, which attracts some 7,000 attendees each year. The city of New Orleans has given so much to sports and music fans alike, and as the world’s largest ticket marketplace, these very fans are the core of our business. Naturally, we wanted to give back.

While considering ways to narrow StubHub’s CSR focus to increase our positive impact, we uncovered findings any Americans for the Arts member knows all too well: while more research than ever before demonstrates how vital the arts are to youth development and future achievement, budget cuts continue to threaten arts education in schools across the country, particularly those in underserved communities. These findings further spurred our drive to give back.