Americans for the Arts

The best way to give children an arts education is to do what we’re doing, only more so.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the current American system for delivering arts education is perfect. Like our system for delivering education in general, it is in constant need of rejuvenation. But it does mean that the system – and it is indeed a system that in principle should be serving some 55 million young people --  is providing a significant service to our children and our communities.

We’re faced with constant calls for altering the direction of things. Some of these calls come from within the arts education community or the many, many smaller communities that make up that larger whole. And some come from those who don’t really seem (from our point of view) to have much expertise in the field, but who carry great power in making educational decisions. To take the first category, that of internal calls for reform, recent calls on the subject that I’ve received include appeals to:
•    change the direction of American music education to focus on the most important indigenous music of our culture. In the opinion of this particular caller, that means American Musical Theatre of the 30s through the 60s.
•    focus more clearly on the development of performance opportunities in Mariachi music.
•    delve more into the emotive power and popularity of classic rock by studying the history of that genre.
•    get all kids in the middle- and high-school levels involved in sound mixing and digital sound manipulation.
•    explore with students the correlations between musical structures (mostly in jazz) and certain geometric solids, which are in turn linked to certain organic molecular structures.

A wise friend once reminded me that students are the only people in a school community that do not really have a choice about being there. When we promise our kids that all of this learning will pay off in a fabulous adulthood, we need to remember how long it takes to get to that reward.

Along the way we know that many kids will choose to stay in school, try harder, and succeed in many areas as a result of participation in the arts. We also know that very successful systems exist to spread that potential. But, what do we do for the student who is struggling to understand why school matters to them today? Is there any way that we can make this very day as meaningful and important right now?

There is a bold team of arts education thinkers that dare to look beyond the important drive for great quantity such as our own “Ask for More” intentions. They are defining a quality of arts engagement that is almost impossible to systematize, difficult to measure, and certainly tricky to sell to adults who are looking at career and college goals.

It’s a pleasure to be a part of such a great group of folks, discussing such a fascinating (and sometimes polarizing) subject. My name is John and I’m a program manager at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. I work in National Partnerships, serving the national network of state Alliances for Arts Education. I also help to dissemination the Kennedy Center’s suite of teaching artist training programs in arts integration, residency planning, and other areas.

The topic of emerging leadership is near to my professional heart. One of the reasons I stayed in the arts was the network of peers I quickly built from my first job in arts administration. I was working for the Washington State Arts Alliance in Seattle, WA and my boss suggested I get involved with the Emerging Leader Network of Americans for the Arts. I went to a conference, found kindred spirits, and made sure to get to every Americans for the Arts conference until I was honored to be elected to the Emerging Leader Council itself. From there, Americans for the Arts hired me and I moved to DC.

Without that network, I would not have developed the interpersonal connections that solidified my commitment to this field. Were it not for the colleagues and friends—those with whom I had frank and easy conversations, shared language, shared even a style of clothing—I would have easily departed the field for another type of job. We were compatriots, battling scarce funding, personnel challenges, and other issues that weighed on us, professionally. I’m sure this experience is common to any generation or group of any kind. Like likes like. But more than that, we sustain each other in rougher times. These connections do not preclude nor devalue connections made across our differences.

by Judith Tannenbaum 

Preserving the important qualities of the Teaching Artist profession, while still moving ahead with its professionalization.

Passing on the vision and practice of art-making is as old as culture itself: creation stories told during long winter evenings, women and young girls weaving baskets, men welcoming boys to their dances. One generation has always taught the next.

This history moves forward into the 21st century. Artists; arts program administrators; school, hospital, senior center, and prison administrators and staff; and professors in a variety of college departments are increasingly asking that the valuable work done for decades by teaching artists be recognized as a professional field. 

One repeated conversation is a fundamental one that questions the ways in which professionalization of the field strengthens or harms this work that we love. In the midst of these conversations, I often think of architect Chris Alexander. When brought to the site of a new project, Alexander is said to have asked community members not only what they wanted that they didn't have, but also what they presently had that they valued and did not want to lose.

That's the question I'd like now to ponder: What do we-teaching artists, students, program administrators, site partners, community activists”cherish about the work of art in other places, as Bill Cleveland calls it, as it has been practiced over the decades? What do we want not to lose as teaching artistry becomes a more formal field?