Americans for the Arts

The Farnsworth Art Museum is a small art museum in Rockland, ME – approximately 70 miles north of the state’s capital – that is really anything but small. Founded in 1948, the museum’s collection was designed specifically to celebrate “Maine’s role in American Art.” With this in mind, it is not at all surprising that the Farnsworth Art Museum’s current focus is building “life-long connections” with all the diverse and divergent audiences in Maine’s mid-coast region.

More and more, we at Americans for the Arts are talking about the transformative power of the arts, echoing the work that has happened at a local level in the arts across America for the past several decades. However, as I move more and more into the education space, I hear a call for the hard facts amongst the heart-warming stories. Education decision makers want to see results, they want to see change, and they want to draw a correlation between the two.

As a professional arts education advocate, I can keep up with most of these requests, but recently I found myself at a bit of a cross roads. I was in Los Angeles, speaking with a self-described ‘music education evangelist,’ who was telling me all about some research that had been conducted on the impact of arts education on the cognitive functions of the brain. Arts Education, he said, could work to close the opportunity gap faster than other – more conventional – tactics.

Across the country, the arts are changing: demographics are shifting, modes of artistic participation are becoming more diverse, and once segmented artistic practices are converging. These changes ring true for both public art and arts education, and over the past year these respective fields have been discussing their convergence.

The Public Art and Arts Education Programs at Americans for the Arts endeavor to explore this intersection, better understand the potential for collaborations, and create tools and resources for encouraging inter-sector cooperation.

As a first step, we have begun to research the shared space. There is an inherent connection between the intrinsic goals of both areas of artistic study and practice.

Public art and arts education have been collaborating informally throughout the past several decades, however as we move towards more formalized practices, the professionalization of both fields, and the siloed funding structures, it is vital to explicitly explore modes of integration and examples of best practices that can inform both arts professionals and decisions makers.

I’m not sure if it’s because it’s summer and the tourism/events season is really rolling in South Dakota or if it’s the fantastic arts experiences I’ve had the good fortune of experiencing in the past couple of months, but I’m having a hard time shaking thoughts about non-traditional forms of arts education.

The arts, in all disciplines, are educational by their very nature. If people are engaging in an arts event or exhibit, they are learning, and there’s no way to stop it. But the really cool thing about learning through the arts is the multiplied effect that results. When learning through the arts, audiences are almost always learning about more than one thing. Another really cool thing: This type of learning generally continues through adulthood.

On July 16, 2015, the U.S. Senate passed its bipartisan Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization proposal, the Every Child Achieves Act (S.1177), by a margin of 81 to 17. Under this legislation, the “arts” are recognized as a core academic subject and would receive their rightful place in the main instructional day.

The Americans for the Arts, along with more than a dozen national arts education organizations were approved by the Senate education committee to define the “arts” to include dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts. These art disciplines are now eligible due to their inclusion in the National Core Arts Standards.  As the over 4 to 1 Senate vote indicates, there is significant bipartisan support for dance and the arts.

The purpose of these words are not to debate a right or wrong musical pedagogy however to promote the convergence of musicians, music, and students approaching music from different places. For the purpose of this article I will refer to the two different approaches as the Social sphere and Refinement sphere and argue that marrying these two approaches is of best interest to all.

In the summer of 2015, 10 students from one of the most challenging neighborhoods in West Baltimore attended the prestigious, Interlochen Center For the Arts on merit based scholarships.