Americans for the Arts

Arts organizations play a crucial role in working toward cultural equity by supporting artists and engaging people in arts-related activities. This is nothing less than a part of the foundation we need to become a more perfect union. Together, artists and arts organizations bring the transformative power of the arts to the people and help lay the groundwork for change.

In a lively discussion at AFTACON, one participant shared that a school in her area tells its students the word “Fail” stands for “First Attempt in Learning.” I embrace this interpretation. Failure can be an opportunity to fall back and regroup—and then come back at the challenge with renewed energy, a sharper strategy, and perhaps and a bigger megaphone

Why don't more private foundations fund arts advocacy? Worse, why are we seeing funders across the country moving away from the supporting the arts at all? These were key questions that the leadership of the State Arts Action Network brought with us to Boston for the 2016 Americans for the Arts Convention.

Laura Perille is an Americans for the Arts member and recipient of the 2016 Arts Education Award. Find out more about the Americans for the Arts Annual Leadership Arts Awards.

We all know the narrative: arts education has suffered from years of neglect and decline in our schools to make room for tested subjects and to balance squeezed school budgets. This trend has played out in many communities across the country. The data on arts access, especially for students of color and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, makes the impact clear.http://www.edvestors.org/news-item/new-report-how-collective-action-revitalized-arts-education-in-boston/

For many artists and cultural leaders, being a part of a political campaign is the farthest thing from their mind. Concentrating on a new creative inspiration, the upcoming show, ticket sales, are often the #1 focus for an artist or arts administrator.

Yet, we all have to remember the arts and cultural community is a public good. Like schools, police departments, and roads, the arts deserve public investment as they are vital to the health and vibrancy of our communities.

Public policy decided by our political leaders is a major factor in deciding the level of resources and support for the creative sector’s work. If the arts, cultural, and creative community wants the resources and support necessary to build vibrant, healthy and equitable communities, it has to start embracing and running political campaigns to build that public support.

I have been involved in many deep discussions regarding diversity and often leave the conversations thinking, what can I do?

I realized that I needed to start by making  PERSONAL CHANGE—TO LISTEN AND NOT JUST HAVE AN AGENDA. Based on conversations, interactions with people, and my own person soul searching I’ve arrived at what I call the 10 Think-Action Steps regarding diversity.

With the rise in racial tension and violence in our communities, the question of how we engage our communities in meaningful civic discourse is being asked across the country—particularly how do we engage our young people and help them understand how to include their “voice” in the discussion? The arts have a long standing place in building a bridge between artistic expression and social justice. “Music and the arts are often the glue that helps hold a movement together, providing a sounding board and an emotional support structure,” says Anthony Trecek-King, Artistic Director for the Boston Children’s Chorus, BCC, during our recent discussion about BCC’s unique mission.

As a nation, we all agree that it is beneficial for every child to receive a comprehensive education, inclusive of the arts. How to operationalize this has been more elusive and challenging. Collective Impact, as shared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review article written by John Kania and Mark Kramer, outlines the conditions for broad, systemic change in social issues, and has been successfully implemented in a variety of communities across the country, including initiatives to support arts education.   

Earlier this month I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, giving a lecture on arts and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Policy. In lieu of standard hotel accommodations, I was offered the chance to stay in John F. Kennedy's senior year suite in Winthrop House—and of course I jumped at it. Sitting down at Kennedy’s desk—complete with an Underwood portable typewriter—I was profoundly moved. I thought of his inspiring words and they resonated with the event and work of the week to come, Arts Advocacy Day, when citizen advocates take to Capitol Hill to make the case for federal support for the arts and arts education.

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.

Each December, I have the pleasure to reflect alongside colleagues of the Americans for the Arts’ Arts Education Advisory Council about what happened in arts education in America over the course of the previous year. It is truly one of my favorite activities – a chance to celebrate big accomplishments, learn from incidents that were not-so-good, and identify trends which may crop up in our work in 2016.

Last year, as we looked back over 2014, we discussed STEAM, creative youth development, standards, new reports, resources for specific student populations, mayors and more. Some things continued this year, and some things did not – check out the list below!

A young dancer recently told me she would be so happy if architects of community change and innovation and planning came to her with a request to put her skills to work for her community. Nothing would make her happier as an artist.

She’s just waiting for the invite! So, why doesn't this happen more often? And why do artists find it so hard to get a seat at the community planning table?

In recent meetings about the role of arts in community building and development, including the four regional meetings of the New Community Visions Initiative this fall, participants from the arts told us that they have a hard time getting a seat at that table. They sense that people in other sectors don’t seem to take arts seriously as a community development partner.

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. 

The essential question that needs to be asked as Congress moves to complete the first substantive reauthorization of federal education legislation since 2001 is different than the one we may instinctively pose. It always seems that simplest truths are the most powerful and, in this case, the one thing that binds everyone reading this, is this: We believe in the arts as a powerful way to enhance the lives of young people. Young people need the arts.

With that simple seed, our guiding question in looking at federal legislation needs embrace that fundamental idea. When we look at the reauthorization of the ESEA, we need to broaden the question beyond ‘How do we get arts into schools?’ to ‘How do we get the arts to young people?’

I returned home from the Americans for the Arts 2015 Annual Convention in June with information and ideas swimming in my head, and hope rising in my heart for the optimistic future of arts education. There are numerous areas of the country where great things are happening to provide access to quality arts education for all children in a district, city, or county, depending on the location and size of the program.

This post by Robert Lynch was originally published on July 15, 2015 by the Huffington Post.

A "first" for my mother came just days shy of her most recent significant birthday -- the exact number for which she does not want to see printed here. As I helped to set up her first major art gallery exhibit in Falmouth, Massachusetts, I marveled at how full of life she was, radiating joy as she showed her work to fellow artists, family and guests. The windswept beaches of her Cape Cod home, colorful harbors, cozy New England cottages, rolling hills and old barns -- she transformed her life experiences into beautiful works of oils and acrylics.

Although each of us can probably recall a time when success could be defined as not losing (too much) ground, we all want to feel like our efforts have been worth the commitment and have made a lasting difference in some way.

During my ten years at ArtsEd Washington, we saw these rewards when we worked with school principals implementing the Principals Arts Leadership program to help them be effective instructional leaders for the arts. This program confirmed the importance of the principals’ role in the day-to-day provision of arts learning and also illuminated for us how difficult that role is to sustain without the context of a supportive school district publicly committed to the arts.

Public schools are full of turmoil these days. Debate over the shift to the Common Core Standards that has taken place over the last few years is causing tension. Teachers are working overtime to figure out the new standardized tests that have been created by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) to assess the new standards. People are concerned about the amount of standardized testing occurring in our schools throughout the year. Most recently, parents in some communities are taking action and pulling their children from taking the standardized tests.

When most people think about a convention center, they think of a stark gray, open exhibit hall. It’s true, most meetings facilities are purposefully very empty and plain, allowing for greater flexibility and customization depending on the meeting planners needs and set up. But when we built the BCEC 15 years ago, I wanted to change the perception of the “ugly convention center,” not just by enlisting a world class architect in Raphael Vinoly to create a distinctive exterior design, but by also rethinking the interior, creating warm, bright, and vibrant spaces that were more inviting than the convention center’s meeting planners were used to visiting in the past.

In Boston, a nonprofit organization called the Theatre Offensive came to the conclusion that the work they were doing – the work that their mission mandated – was stale. When the company was founded, it was a challenge to find live performances that addressed LGBT issues and contained LGBT characters. TTO strove to make that comment widely available in Boston. Now that theatre addressing sexual orientation and gender identity has become common in Boston proper, TTO’s adherence to its mission - to make queer-themed plays accessible - suddenly feels out of touch with the energy behind its founding.

Urban school districts, such as New York and Chicago, are taking bold steps to expand the school day curriculum and once again invest in arts education. After years of budget cuts, and a narrowing of curriculum at public schools across the country, cities are taking action.

Owing largely to mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, school districts of all sizes spent recent years focusing educational goals very narrowly on improving test scores in just two subject areas—English Language and Math. This focus came at the expense of the arts, music, and other subject areas that were not being tested.

Fortunately, the tide may be turning, and arts education may be making comeback.

If you haven’t heard of it, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, is well worth a visit – no matter how long it takes to get there. If you have heard of it, then you know what I’m talking about.

Opened in 2000, in a massive factory complex that takes up nearly a third of downtown North Adams, MASS MoCA is a seamless blend of contemporary art, community, and education.

North Adams is located in the general Western Massachusetts region and, in the past 25 years, has unfortunately been subject to significant economic upheaval that left a majority of the population unemployed. While the museum had an understandably rocky start in this setting - trying to convince locals that the arts could indeed revitalize an entire town - in the past 14 years they have achieved exactly that. This slow but steady growth and success is largely thanks to the museum staff’s steadfast commitment to high-quality arts education and to their community.

I can now affirmatively say that I have been at Americans for the Arts for over a year! Woohoo! …And what a year it has been.

Each month the Arts Education Advisory Council of Americans for the Arts has a monthly call. In December, we sat on the call reflecting on the previous year and what we had all accomplished personally, collectively, and throughout the field. In my role as the Arts Education Program Coordinator, I am privileged to see a lot of things that happen on a national scale across the country, and the council often provides insight into the impacts of these trends or brings my attention to something that is up-and-coming before it has actually made a splash.

Nina Ozlu Tunceli

 

In this year’s midterm elections, Republicans took back the Senate, kept control of the House and won governorships in 31 states and counting. What does that mean for you and for us, as strong advocates of the arts and arts education? Here we break down the national, state, and local results - and their potential impact on the arts:   In Congress The U.S. Senate will be Republican-led. This means all Senate committees will see new chairmen, and since those committees control and recommend federal spending, these new chairmen could have significant impact on federal arts funding.

Heather Ikemire

March 29, 2014, was the final day of the first-ever National Summit on Creative Youth Development in Boston—a national convening of more than 200 youth arts practitioners, funders, policymakers, and students designed to bring new energy and focus to creative youth development. On that day 86 individuals stood up at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and declared personal commitments to advancing creative youth development. I was proud to be one of them.

Terry Liu

As an Arts Education Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts, I am fortunate to see new blooms in the field of education.  Earlier this year, I was honored to join more than 200 national, state, local, and community-based youth arts leaders for the National Summit on Creative Youth Development in Boston, sponsored by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education.

It’s exciting to have a quorum of leaders who are committed to taking creative youth development to the next level.  We came with decades of experience in this field, and we left with a clear policy and advocacy agenda that our respective organizations could implement at the local, state, and national levels.

Laura Perille

 

Is it possible to rapidly increase the level of arts education offered in an urban district? Based on the example of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) Arts Expansion Initiative launched in 2009 by EdVestors, the BPS Superintendent, and local foundations, the resounding answer to that question is yes. This effort was rooted in the belief that arts opportunities play a powerful role in the life and learning of students in urban schools, and that a fundamental part of creating these opportunities was increasing access to quality arts education in order to create equity for all students. One of the main challenges initially faced by BPS Arts Expansion was increasing the amount of in-school arts education offered in Boston Public Schools.

Mari Barrera

Collaborative fundraising provides nonprofits with more donors and more donations for all - $8 million in new dollars in total over a five-year period. That was the experience of the 30 youth arts organizations that participated in the ARTWorks for Kids coalition, an effort initiated and supported by Hunt Alternatives in Cambridge, MA.

How did 30 different youth arts organizations – all collaborators in serving youth in the Greater Boston area, but also competitors for donations – join forces to raise money together? First, we supported the leaders of these organizations as they worked together to build trust with their colleagues. Then, we provided a venue for each coalition member to showcase the great art their youth were producing for a large and diverse group of funders.

August 4, 2014 was the 180^th Birthday of John Venn. If you’ve ever sat through a PowerPoint presentation, chances are you know John’s work. A Venn Diagram is a way of visually depicting the intersection of ideas, concepts or, in the case of Creative Youth Development, sectors of work.

Jeff Poulin

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Arts Education Partnership’s annual National Forum. Aside from the connecting with arts education friends and learning tons (I mean tons!) in the sessions, I also had the opportunity to sit in on a session titled, “Fostering Student Success by Leveraging the Impact of Out of School Time, Creative Youth Development Programs.” What was great about the session was the interconnectivity of people, research and agenda from so many other national conversations which were initiated as a result of the policy and advocacy agenda produced after the first National Summit on Creative Youth Development in Boston.

Lia O'Donnell

While the need for something bright and eye-catching to bring energy to an office environment might be obvious, many corporations are looking to do even more than just put art on their walls—they want to support the creative economy. At the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston (A&BC), we’ve created a program that not only brings art into offices, but supports the professional aims of local artists.

Launched in 2012, the A&BC’s Corporate Art Partnerships Program seeks to forge greater connections among business and arts communities by bringing extraordinary, original artwork by local artists into Boston’s workplaces. This program is grounded in our philosophy of investing in artists and is an outgrowth of our now ten-year commitment to the professional development of artists through programs like the Artist’s Professional Toolbox. True to our mission—and unlike many other lending programs—we share program revenue with the lending artists. The loan of artworks also provides opportunities for works to be purchased outright by our clients. This Corporate Art Partnerships Program is part of our strategic plan to develop deeper and richer relationships with businesses and to invest in the local arts community.