Americans for the Arts

Katherine Damkohler

With school districts across the nation failing to include arts instruction as part of their curricula, many cultural and arts organizations have decided to step in to fill this gap by providing arts education programs for nearby schools.

These amazing organizations have taken action to ensure that our children have at least some exposure to the arts. However, could these activities actually be detrimental to the long-term sustainability of in-school arts programs?

For instance, the prestige of a regional organization might lull a principal or school board into thinking that a part-time program is sufficient and they no longer need to hire a full-time arts instructor.

While organizations may be aiming to enrich a student’s education, are they also helping schools justify their choice to eradicate arts instruction?

What is an arts organization to do? What role should they have in arts education? They wield enormous power, which if used correctly can be very effective in supporting a child’s artistic education. But how should they go about catalyzing arts education reform?

Kristen Engebretsen

I recently authored a post titled The Top 10 Ways to Support Arts Education, but I’m finding that I get more requests from people asking for reasons why arts education should be supported, not how.

So as a companion piece to the how of supporting arts education, here I offer reasons why arts education should be supported.

Usually, when making the case for arts education, I direct people to resources like the recent Reinvesting in Arts Education report by the President’s Committee for the Arts and the Humanities. It compiles all of the classic arguments in favor of arts education: it boosts student achievement, it increases student engagement, and it helps to close the achievement gap.

My colleague Randy Cohen has also offered reasons to support arts education in his Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts post. He, too, cites academic achievement, but he also mentions the role of arts education in preparing students with 21st century job skills, like communication and creativity.

However, this post is not about what arts education does in terms of other achievement areas. Rather, it is about what the arts intrinsically do for students.

Ron Jones

Tomorrow is my investiture as president of Memphis College of Art. I’ve been “on the job” for about 5 months, and now it’s inauguration time. Other than a lot of pomp and circumstance, visitors from out of town, and me making a speech, is there anything really that special associated with the day?

Well, maybe there is more to this day than I first thought because without this investiture, and without making a big deal of my stepping into the position, I would not have felt the need to step back, take a look at what I am discovering, planning, and doing and try to make some sense of it all.

The truth is that this entire process from the pomp to the ceremony itself may be nothing more than a devious means of getting the person entrusted with leading the institution to pause and contextualize what’s going on.

Maybe I am wrong about the intentions, but I can tell you that in this one case it has worked effectively. I have spent hours thinking about what I should say, only to remain frustrated for weeks regarding my challenge.

Victoria Plettner-Saunders

Over the last few years, I’ve blogged here about our arts education advocacy efforts in San Diego with the San Diego Unified School District. I am the co-founding chair of the San Diego Alliance for Arts Education (SDAAE) which officially launched in May 2010 (although our collective grassroots advocacy work began a year earlier).

As chair of the SDAAE I have been very clear about the approach I want to take in leading the advocacy work that we do. While I believe that public comment and letter writing are important components of advocacy, I am also an evangelist for developing a working relationship with those to whom you are directing your efforts.

In this case, it’s our local school board. We have always carried the message to them that we want to be partners in supporting arts education and that we are available as a helpful resource for them. As a result, members have called when they have decisions to make or proposals to craft that they know will affect outcomes in the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Department.

Most recently, the school board asked community members to assist with what they call “Tiger Teams.” These teams are essentially efforts to get new information and an outside perspective about way that various district departments do business.

Kristy Callaway

The internet gives today's teenagers the kind of freedom that driving a car gave teens in previous generations. But unlike learning to drive a car, kids today can teach themselves to navigate the internet. Growing up in Key West in the 70's and 80's, I didn’t have a car or the internet. However, I quickly understood the power of networking.

The ability to seek and find people, places, and things can have as much if not more impact than mobility from automobiles. And, just as with cars, good and bad comes with the "license." Think of the good the internet can do for the police assisting 911 callers, a parent keeping up with a teenager, or a principal searching for a truant student. Or consider the bad aspects of a crazed ex-girlfriend stalking an unknowing ex-boyfriend, or a child molester waiting for parents to leave their children unattended.

Parallel parking seems simple, but takes years to perfect, however, the gaming industry exponentially produces high concept high skill activities for your entire body that completely engage, absorb, and hypnotize players. Traveling at 80 mph in a car or online is exhilarating, scary and fast!

Recently, I met a 14-year-old entrepreneur who customizes Xbox controllers for hardcore players. He was taking a film and production graduate course alongside me to learn how to improve his editing skills in his own gaming efforts and to speed his score acceleration. He sought out this skill set; he didn’t wait for school to teach him.

Kristen Engebretsen

I hope that everyone has enjoyed reading the thoughts from leaders both in and outside our field during this blog salon in honor of National Arts in Education Week.

As we design and teach our youth programs, we need to keep the end in mind. Where are our students going to end up? How can we help them get there? Our schools’ guidance counselors can’t do everything—they are overburdened, have little arts content expertise, and limited interaction with each student.

That means that it is up to teachers, parents, community members, and those of us that work at arts organizations to guide our students. We need to give students real world experiences, provide them field trips to community organizations and businesses, inform them about career options, and guide them to areas where they are motivated and can excel.

During the salon, we heard examples of how this is already happening:

1)     Alyx’s story about helping students with their first job.
2)    Deutsche Bank’s collaboration with the Partnership for After School Education to create a comprehensive Youth Arts Career Guide.

In my previous post, I wrote about the value of arts education in keeping students on track to graduation—regardless of their career aspirations—and the role of parents in ensuring that principals are aware of the value of arts learning to students and the school community.

For those students who are interested in a career in the arts, one would think there is no greater place to be than in New York City. Arts-related businesses in the city generate $21 billion annually, providing over 200,000 jobs in everything from set production and theater management to video game design and advertising.

Unfortunately though, far too many of our city high schools are not providing a quality arts education, even though arts instruction is mandated by state law and we are surrounded by an incredible wealth of cultural institutions and amenities.

As part of our advocacy and public awareness efforts we work with parents in new and exciting ways to build support for the arts in schools.

Parents are helping lead advocacy workshops for other parents and school leaders, they are working with principals to encourage local elected officials to support their school arts programs, and they are helping create resources that can move others to action.

Stephanie Riven

One of the most compelling ideas related to workforce development is the report issued in February 2011 called Pathways to Prosperity by Robert Schwartz and Ron Ferguson of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The report points out that every year, one million students leave school before earning a high school degree.

Many of these students say that they dropped out of high school because they felt their classes were not interesting and that school was unrelentingly boring. They say that they didn’t believe high school was relevant or provided a pathway to achieving their dreams.

According to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, the U.S. economy will create 47 million job openings over the 10-year period ending in 2018. Nearly two-thirds of these jobs will require that workers have at least some post-secondary education. Applicants with no more than a high school degree will fill just 36 percent of the job openings or just half the percentage of jobs they held in the early 1970s.

How can we reverse these trends?

Doug Israel

Most people these days would not disagree with the notion that the first step to a promising career, in any field, is attaining a high school diploma.

Sure, there are some well-known exceptions (see: Johnny Depp, Chris Rock, Peter Jennings, Britney Spears, and “Wendy’s” Dave Thomas), but good paying jobs are few and far between for those that don’t graduate from high school.

In fact, earning a diploma increases the likelihood of steady employment by 30 percent and cuts the chances of experiencing poverty in half. Despite this, today, in the United States, more than one million students across the United States drop out of high school each year.

The good news is that there is evidence from the field that shows that the arts can play a role in reversing this trend.

In several national studies over the past decade, students at risk of dropping out cite participation in the arts as their reason for staying in school. Research has also shown that arts education has had a measurable impact on at-risk youth in deterring delinquent behavior and truancy problems while also increasing overall academic performance.

Billie Jean Knight

I hold steadfastly to the perspective that students pursue an education, of which schooling is only a part, to discover their own inspired gifts and talents.

In the process, they develop a passion and commitment to achieve excellence as they master the communication, problem-solving, and technical skills to allow for a high-quality personal and work life.

However, too often our most inspired, creative, and visionary young people are derailed in their quest to discover and express their exceptional gifts in the context of life’s work because of the systemic discouragement at every stage of educational development.

The sad truth is that routinely governmental entities, communities, educators, and parents hold constrained paradigms that teach our young artists to fear, doubt, and worry about a choice to become a professional artist.

Sally Gaskill

In his post, Ron Jones takes on the topic of career development for art and design students. I thought I would check in with Angela Myles Beeching, author of Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music, for her perspective on the performing arts. As she says, “It takes more than talent to succeed in music.”

Beeching, who has a DMA in cello performance, is the former director of the Career Services Center at New England Conservatory. She currently directs the Center for Music Entrepreneurship at Manhattan School of Music and maintains a thriving private consulting practice.

Q (Sally): I once heard the dean of a prominent school of music say that typical undergraduate music students do not start thinking about what they might do after graduation until the spring semester of their junior year. Then they panic. What’s your response to that scenario?

A (Angela): Part of it is a developmental process: undergrads are so busy fulfilling their degree requirements and figuring out how to become adults, that the reality of graduation does not start to get real until junior year. However, students at every stage have entrepreneurial project ideas. So, the earlier you can engage students in developing leadership and entrepreneurial skills, the easier it is for them to think about longer-term career goals and the action steps needed to fulfill their dreams.

Ron Jones

We who educate aspiring artists, whether we’re public or private, liberal arts or research university, or a professional school, tend not to give sufficient attention to what ensures proficiency in our students, or what prepares our graduates to act upon an indifferent world.

We tend to give little attention to preparing students as entrepreneurs who have a sense of business or an understanding of how to make the world work for them.

We are inclined to give minimal, if any, attention to basic skills (writing, presenting, managing, arguing, collaborating, etc.) necessary for transforming an excellent education in art into a successful life-long profession in that art.

Yes, we do an excellent job of giving students the skills, knowledge, and understandings that relate to art-making, but that’s it!

Put more self-accusingly, we have generally opened the door at commencement, bid the graduates goodbye, closed the door, locked it, dusted off our hands and said with a sigh, “We’ve done our part; now it’s up to you.”

I am here to say we can do better; we must!

Eric Booth

The work of George Lakoff has made the power of the framing of an issue clear and public.

For years Lakoff’s work has focused on the use of metaphor, and more recently he has written widely about the ways that embedded metaphors do more to shape people’s opinions and understandings than the factual content. He has focused on public perceptions in politics particularly.

For example, if the public accepts the words “death tax” as the basis for any discussion of inheritance taxes—the “pro” side of that argument has already lost. The embedded metaphor is so potently negative, that unless you change the frame, you can’t win the argument even with strong points and facts.

I once encountered this clearly in arts education.

At an event a conservative candidate for Senate lit into me (identified as the arts guy) as being against testing to find out if students are really learning anything. I got him to pause. I asked him, “Do you think every student deserves a highly engaging school day to help her learn?”

He paused, uncertain, and fearing a trap. But he finally admitted that he agreed with that statement.

Flipping through an issue of Crain’s Business Journal earlier this summer, I was excited to read of President and CEO of JetBlue Airways Dave Barger’s appointment as the new Chair of the Board of Directors for PENCIL, one of New York City’s leading nonprofits focused on improving public education through partnerships with local businesses.

After doing some preliminary research and discovering this brief but impactful YouTube clip of a PENCIL campaign, I was hooked!

“I can do anything! I can be anything! I am a success!” Hearing these words come from an auditorium of young African-American students participating in the simple ritual of tying on a tie inspired me.

Look at our future empowered leaders! How can we help them achieve their personal and professional goals? What does PENCIL do exactly?

Sarah Murr

In Tony Wagner’s book The Global Achievement Gap, he writes that “the Global Achievement Gap is the gap between what our best schools are teaching and testing versus the skills that all students will need for careers, college, and citizenship in the 21st century.”

Wagner based this book on extensive interviews not with educators, but with corporations.

Those interviews led Wagner to develop the “Seven Survival Skills...people need in order to discuss, understand, and offer leadership to solve some of the most pressing issues we face as a democracy in the 21st century":

1.    Critical thinking and problem solving
2.    Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3.    Agility and adaptability
4.    Initiative and entrepreneurship
5.    Effective oral and written communication
6.    Accessing and analyzing information
7.    Curiosity and imagination

Mark Slavkin

As advocates for arts education, we try to stay flexible and timely in our rationale and arguments. We want to be current and relevant about the latest studies and trends.

If “21st century skills” are in vogue, we can show the relevance of arts learning. If the talk is about the primacy of science, technology, engineering, and math, we are quick to suggest we add the arts and make STEM become STEAM. And if the focus is on the economy and jobs, we stand ready to make the case for how learning in the arts prepares young people for a wealth of future job opportunities.

I worry that our advocacy and rhetoric may get ahead of the reality of our practice. Are we really delivering on all the benefits we promise?

While advocacy is essential, I wish we devoted as much time to sharing with each other about the nuts and bolts of classroom practice. Perhaps we could even display some humility about what we can deliver and what is not quite ready for prime time.

This brings me to the topic of careers in the arts. Our advocacy often refers to an economic imperative for arts education. Here in California we talk about the direct application of skills learned in arts education to jobs in the arts and the broader creative economy.

We also suggest that arts education cultivates a range of skills that will be valuable across all economic sectors, such as creativity, collaboration, and innovation.

Rob Schultz

I have this sneaking suspicion that if you ask a typical high school student to tell you what career choices exist in the arts, they would give “artist,” and “art teacher” as their two, and possibly only two, examples. Unfortunately, I think that too many young people are unaware of the myriad career options that center on the arts.

So, here’s a plug for enlightenment.

In my own experience, I’d never considered such a career until my bachelor’s degree days. A full-time student in need of multiple part-time jobs, I found a “student assistant” position in the office of my university’s art department helping professors and the dean, answering phones, handling routine administrative tasks, and doing word processing on a primitive, mid-1980s computer platform.

This initial foray led to a lengthy and satisfying career in arts administration.

This career has benefitted me in many ways, not the least of which comes from wonderful opportunities to work and interact with a wide variety of arts professionals. Many of these jobs I never dreamed existed back in my school days.

Take government work, for starters.

Kristen Engebretsen

To celebrate our second annual National Arts in Education Week, Americans for the Arts is hosting its biannual arts education blog salon.

We’ve chosen the topic: “Career Development for Students and the Role of Arts Education.”

I asked our contributing authors to interpret this broadly: careers in the arts, post-high school options, 21st century skills, workforce development, investment in an innovative workforce, etc.

Throughout the week, you’ll hear from many staff members from Americans for the Arts, several of our Arts Education Council members, and other key players in our field including: a former assistant superintendent, a corporate arts education funder, the Deputy Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, and more.

Deb Vaughn

My husband and I are now expecting our first child. With both of us being arts educators, we feel like we’re in a good position to help our child experience the arts.

In fact, the little one has already been to see shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. (During the production of Pirates of Penzance I could have sworn I felt jazz hands in my belly.)

But, as much as we value the arts in our family, I know that when the time comes to send Junior off to school, we will have to be active, passionate, vocal, and unrelenting advocates. Here are some places we plan to start.

Stay Educated
Although I have plenty of stories about the importance of arts education, it is equally important for advocates to stay on top of the statistics too. Here are some recent data gems to keep handy:
• 72.5 percent of tenth graders from "high-arts" schools scored in the top half of standardized tests (verbal and math combined) compared to 45 percent from "low-arts" schools.
• A state of Missouri survey found that districts offering more fine arts classes have a one percent higher attendance rate. Attendance effects funding, so in a district of 12,000 students, a one percent increase in attendance equals an additional $430,000 annually.

Angela Harris

Prior to starting my company, I worked at a couple of places, which will remain nameless, where leadership meant ruling the company through one set of eyes.

On one occasion, I was told by the board president that I couldn’t come to meetings because of my youth and (assumed) inexperience. There was another time where I was reprimanded by a boss for suggesting alternative ways to market, because she thought I was putting her ways down.

I have always said that I am thankful for all of my work experiences, especially the dysfunctional ones, because I have learned exactly what NOT to do. Now, leading my own company, I often take the time to reflect on my past experiences, and this week, I had the chance to observe 20 incredibly talented youth demonstrate the power that creativity has on transforming and developing leadership capabilities.

As a leader, sometimes being part of the team is just as important as delegating. Building up other members of the team to feel confident in their leadership abilities should enhance the company, not serve as grounds for a power struggle. Working as a cohesive unit sometimes requires leaving your tenure at the door, and being open to hearing, learning, and communicating with everyone in your organization, without letting your status trump that of someone younger or less experienced.

Naomi Natale

Last September, I went to East San Jose Elementary School here in my hometown of Albuquerque, NM. While there I spoke with over 200 fourth and fifth grade students in six classes.

For the three weeks before I visited, the students had been studying “virtues” under the guidance of their teacher, Amy Sweet, who heard about One Million Bones, loves the project, and wanted to bring it into her classroom.

Together we began the lesson by asking the students about their virtues — which ones they possess, which ones their friends possess, etc. — and asking what acts they do that show them off. We then asked the question,  “How do we find the virtues in people that we don’t really like?”

All of us together decided that virtues are very much like bones, that though we cannot see them we know that they exist and that they make us who we are. We also decided that EVERYBODY has virtues just like EVERYBODY has bones. And then we began the process of art-making.

The 53rd Street Community Garden

The goal of the 53rd Street Community Garden was to create a sustainable community garden with colorful artistic components and outdoor classrooms. Students would utilize this outdoor space to discover scientific exploration of plants, insects, and animals, while fostering a respect for the neighborhood.

Although this project is still pretty fresh and constantly evolving, we have seen an amazing community effort in building a space where education, cultivation, and neighborhood come together. It has been beautiful to have a place where teachers can bring their classrooms outside to plant vegetables, where community members tend to their plots and interact with the youth, and where two schools that rarely socialize now have some common ground.

We are currently working with the school on plans for developing a culinary arts program, installing a gazebo, and scheduling a community harvest event. We are excited about expanding the school/community garden model, which we’ve named Growing Great Gardens (3G), to other Milwaukee Public Schools.

Students display a bench they created for their school/community garden.

I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Diego. One of the most engaging ideas that I took home with me was the relationship between innovation and impact.

We talked about how these two ideas are often assumed to go hand-in-hand and although many innovative ideas do have significant impact on large groups of people, sometimes innovation is for the sake of innovation.

One member of my table used the analogy of the space pen – how NASA spent tons of money and research developing a zero gravity pen that could write in space, which is a cool, I want one, but pencils always seemed to work just fine in the past. Was this innovative, probably, did it have a significant impact on a large group of people or was it a catalyst of great purpose, probably not.

I must admit I am a bit biased on what we termed ‘The Space Pen Theory’ because of my arts education background. We are trained to weigh much more heavily on the impact of a project than the novelty of the idea, not to say that we aren’t often able to bring those two elements together but for educational purposes, the process is often more closely examined than the product.

We deliberately tried to balance impact and innovation with the 53rd Street School Community Garden Project. Community gardens and school gardens are not super fresh ideas but the fusion of the two in a project that uses the arts to engage the entire community from the inception, brings new life to both.

Shelby Morrison

All in all, our "Door 2 Door" program was a success.

There are some hilarious failures to talk about, which include a prospect calling the police after suspicions of terrorism and the group dancing on the lawn of a prospect that had security cameras - all of the types of mishaps you can imagine when showing up at a strangers doorstep.

The project gained us a significant donor and our current board chair, which is exciting.

When our organization looks at new projects or considers some type of change or innovation, whether it be development or program related, we always consider the following:

Josh Groban

Singer-songwriter Josh Groban was a strong supporter of the arts and arts education long before gaining the attention of the music industry in 1998. His initial foray into charitable causes has always included arts education, in addition to a number of other causes.

However, Groban also recognizes that access to quality arts education has been declining and he wants to do as much as he can to help students be exposed to, and trained in, music, theater, dance, and visual arts.

Yesterday he announced that he is refocusing his charitable efforts on arts education under a new name, the Find Your Light Foundation.

Seeking to make a difference in schools across America and around the world, the foundation will focus on providing instruments and funding for arts programs in schools.

Higher Education Peer Group Session - AFTA11

I have the great privilege of attending this year’s Americans for the Arts Annual Convention as a student representative of San Diego State University. As a student, I was excited to attend the Higher Education Peer Group.

During the session, the conversation gravitated toward the difficult decision college students face as they declare their major. In a fickle economic environment and uncertain job market, students may be deterred from choosing to major in their true passion—music, dance, theater, art, photography, etc.

Rob Schultz

As an arts administrator with responsibility for community arts education programs, it’s too easy to get caught up in the routine side of management: revenue, expenses, supervising staff, policies, procedures, publicity, and the rest. While necessary, these are merely tools to reach the more crucial and satisfying aspect of community arts education: improving people’s lives and helping them be happy.

In Mesa, AZ, our community arts education programs are fairly comprehensive, and growing.

In 2005, through a “Quality of Life” half-cent sales tax increase approved in 1998 by our citizens, Mesa completed a $99.8 million arts complex just a few blocks north of the original Arts Center site. Because our arts education classes had grown over the years and demand was high, the new Mesa Arts Center’s design included 14 fully-equipped visual and performing arts studios on two floors in two buildings, including an 8,000 square-foot ceramics studio and kiln courtyard.