Americans for the Arts

Americans for the Arts is pleased to announce our Council election results. Below are your peers from across the country who will be serving on the following Councils starting next year. Thank you to everyone who submitted nominations and who voted online. We are looking forward to working with these leaders throughout their terms.

Arts Education Council
Emerging Leader Council
Public Art Network (PAN) Council
United Arts Fund (UAF) Council

by Laura Reeder, Founding Executive Director, Partners for Arts Education, Syracuse, NY

The 21st century movement toward less didactic and more collaborative education for our next generation has been especially focused on the place of the arts in learning. As our schools and community partners work to redesign the classroom with more experiential opportunities, we are also redesigning the shape of leadership and resource delivery to serve these new environments.

As the director of a state-level service organization for arts education, I am trying to determine whether the changes are good or not.

It is good that with popular emphasis on the holistic, simultaneous, contextual, imagistic, and intuitive characteristics of artistic or right-brain function, the arts are seen as an ally to education. Historically, arts and education communities have been allies when they found themselves on the bottom of the funding ladder together. They shared an identity that appeared to take more from society than it could give. That was not so good.

To seize current opportunity and make use of our shared potential, schools, cultural organizations, policymakers, funders, and individuals are using consortia to surround arts education with leadership at all levels and through many perspectives. There is a strengthening of national, professional networks to do this.

By guest blogger Merryl Goldberg

When I read that my particular profession was singled out (with a few other unlucky professions), in an amendment to the stimulus bill, I was reminded of the discrimination I knew  growing up Jewish in the 60s.  One night my parents came home ecstatic that they had won a raffle to play a round of golf at a club that didn’t let in Jews.  Very soon after they cashed in the raffle, invited other Jewish friends and after playing 17 holes of golf, they danced an enthusiastic hora on the 18th hole.  This memory came back to me as I read the news of the Tom Coburn amendment that bars stimulus funding from going to casinos, aquariums, zoos, golf courses and swimming pools, museums, arts centers, theaters, highway beautification projects, stadiums and parks.

A colleague sent me this brilliant letter advocating for arts education. It uses financial, ethical, and socioeconomic arguments for retaining the Visual and Performing Arts office of the San Diego County Office of Education. And each point is research-based. As the sender noted, "I think it takes the cake for most inventive and well researched. " Thanks to our tipster, Victoria, for keeping Americans for the Arts and our readers up-to-date.

May 31, 2009

Members of the Board:

In the face of unprecedented financial hardship, the Board of Education is charged with the unenviable task of meeting the needs of the public while concurrently addressing budgetary limitations. Given this economic climate, it is understood by all parties involved that concessions must be made in order to protect the integrity of the educational experiences provided to San Diego’s youth.

With this in mind, I must adamantly insist that the board not proceed in considering the elimination of the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program. There are a number of grounds that suggest that the elimination of such a program from the district would prove to be both financially and educationally ill conceived.

The elimination of the Visual and Performing Arts Department will, according to district figures (i.e. the entire VAPA budget), save approximately $3.2 million dollars for the 2009-10 academic year. While the financial benefit of this will help meet the needs of the immediate budgetary constraints, the long-term effects of this decision will far outweigh the short-term benefits.

I just saw the movie, "Julie and Julia", and suspected  it would relate to my last blog on the role of persistence as a tool for learning  - and I was right.  Culinary arts are such a great example of practice, persistence, and learning by reading (recipes) and learning by doing (actually cooking).  There are several standout scenes in the movie for me.  One is of Julia  Child in France having just completed her first day or two of cooking class where she failed onion chopping only to return home to chop onion after onion in her kitchen to practice the art of cutting an onion!  Talk about practicing.  Her husband enters to quite an onion stench and promptly leaves.  Julia's persistence and determination drives this onion chopping practice session. And upon returning to class the next day she out chops the entire class (gleefully, may I add).

Another scene involves the second major character, Julie, who after months of blogging and persistently  cooking every one of Julia Child's recipes from her Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook, has become of interest to the New York Times. A reporter interviews Julie, and a major story is printed in the Times about her race to cook all of Julia Child's recipes within a year.