Americans for the Arts

I will be forever grateful to Americans for the Arts (AFTA) for the timely research and training they provided for our region’s arts education advocacy efforts in the spring of 2013. Americans for the Arts’ Narric Rome reached out to the Arts Council of Greater Lansing after hearing headlines regarding the Lansing School District’s decision to disproportionately eliminate arts, music, physical education, and media teachers. As we were later to discover, news had quickly traveled to multiple national conferences, delivering fear of similar situations to follow in communities across the country.

Confession #1: I had to Google “cognitive development” before I started writing this. I’m an arts administrator, after all, not an educator.

Confession #2: From my perspective, it seems clear that art makes kids smart. To the body of research demonstrating art education’s score-boosting, transferrable-skills, and college-readiness cognitive development superpowers, I say, “Yup.”

Confession #3. I live in Rapid City, South Dakota (not far from Mount Rushmore). Our community, which encompasses nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has long, deep, painful struggles with racism.

Thank you Americans for the Arts for giving your Arts Education award to a Teaching Artist for the first time (me!)! I take it as a public recognition of teaching artistry’s usually-overlooked contribution to the arts education ecosystem. So let’s take a look at teaching artistry.

When is the last time you thought about the national field of teaching artistry? For the vast majority of readers, the answer is probably somewhere between “a long time ago” and “never.” Let’s poke you into thinking about it again right now.

Narric Rome, Vice President of Government Affairs and Arts Education at Americans for the Arts, has been keeping us apprised on the reauthorization of ESEA, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and how the arts and arts education are being seen within the context of this legislation. Next week, Americans for the Arts will host a blog salon here during National Arts in Education Week, and continue the conversation around the ESEA.

This is the first time in more than a decade that there has been debate and discussion about this bill on the House and Senate floors.  That’s a good sign!  We have an opportunity to raise the profile of arts education and why standards and testing need to have a significant arts component.

Just imagine how our lives in the arts would really be impacted if we didn’t have a U.S Department of Education (USDOE). This does not necessarily mean we would not have an ESEA, as the ESEA predates the U.S Department of Education (1965 and 1980 respectively), but they are fundamentally linked. So consider, if the USDOE was dissolved, how would that impact the reauthorization of the ESEA, and the arts in your locale? 

It's the season of thanksgiving, and we have so much to be thankful for in a world that may, at times, seem less than hospitable.

This week, we celebrated Giving Tuesday – a reminder that while the Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday retail efforts are all important to the economy, the nonprofit world deserves equal consideration in terms of financial support for the good these organizations do in our communities.

Where would we be as a nation without our arts education nonprofit organizations?  Where would we be without art and music and dance and drama and poetry and theatre?