Americans for the Arts

Partnering Arts Education: A Working Model from ArtsConnection details the importance of classroom teachers and artists forming partnerships as they build successful residencies in schools. Partnering Arts Education provides insight and concrete steps in using the ArtsConnection model.

Based on ten years of research on high-quality after school activities, ArtShow demonstrates how community based youth programs can provide meaningful experiences for young people during the high risk time when they are neither at school or at home. Arts activities in particular provide an environment that forms identity, provides a safe place for young people to be vulnerable and express emotion, requires discipline and exposes youth to risk and criticism. Four in-depth case studies reveal how arts activities can also develop entrepreneurism. With principles that can be used in creating

Offers a philosophical foundation and rationale for teaching music composition, while discussing the teacher's role in composition instruction. Based on the Northwestern University Music Education Leadership Seminar directed by Bennett Reimer, professor emeritus at the Northwestern University School of Music.

Artists, alongside scientists and entrepreneurs, are role models for innovation in our societies. Not surprisingly, arts education is commonly said to be a means of developing skills considered as critical for innovation: critical and creative thinking, motivation, self-confidence, and ability to communicate and cooperate effectively, but also skills in non-arts academic subjects such as mathematics, science, reading and writing. Does arts education really have a positive impact on the three subsets of skills that we define as “skills for innovation”: technical skills, skills in

To push for higher standards of learning, many policymakers are eliminating arts programs. This book presents the definitive case, based on what is known about the brain and learning, for making the arts a core part of the basic curriculum and thoughtfully integrating them into every subject. Separate chapters address musical, visual, and kinesthetic arts in ways that reveal their influence on learning. Evidence points to the following effects of a fully implemented arts program: fewer dropouts; higher attendance; better team players; an increased love of learning; greater student dignity;

The existing research on the value and positive impact of adolescent involvement in the arts, while often examining generic academic benefits of K-12 arts study (e.g., Catterall, 1997; 2009; Deasy, 2002; Gouzouasis, Guhn, & Kishor, 2007; Helmrich, 2010; Miksza, 2007a; 2010; Morrison, 1994; Schellenberg, 2005; Southgate & Roscigno, 2009), has yet to specifically explore arts education as a pathway to college. The social and economic value of attending and completing college has been well documented in the research literature (Hout, 2012; Kane & Rouse, 1995; Marcotte, Bailey,

This guide is drawn from lessons learned during two musical instrument drives sponsored by New York’s classical music radio station, WQXR. Students in under-resourced music programs across the New York City area benefited from the roughly 6,000 musical instruments donated through the drive.

This fact sheet reviews the benefits to k-12 students who are invovled in gardens at the schools.

This Issue Brief provides examples of arts-based education as a money-and time-saving option for states looking to build skills, increase academic success, heighten standardized test scores, and lower the incidence of crime among general and at-risk populations.

This report is about how non-formal learning and especially youth work can enhance the creative and innovative capacities of young people in ways that are relevant to employability. It goes beyond identifying the skills and competences involved, to present illustrative examples of practice and cross-sectoral cooperation.

In 2010, an ambitious model for social change emerged in Chicago that aimed to connect detained youth and those at risk for incarceration (“at-risk youth”1) to rigorous and engaging arts instruction, infused with social and emotional learning goals. Dubbed the Arts Infusion Initiative, the Chicago Community Trust (“the Trust”) spearheaded and funded this five year, $2.5 million demonstration while earning cooperation from the local detention facility, public school system, community policing office, and community arts program leaders to integrate arts programming

This article provides a definition for the term creative youth development, describes core characteristics of CYD programs, and briefly describes four CYD programs.

This report is based on research conducted to gather insights from arts, humanities, and science based youth development programs on the keys to their practice, impact, and future. The report serves as briefing materials for the National Summit on Creative Youth Development: Unite. Celebrate. Activate held in March 2014. The Summit was presented by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in partnership with the National Guild for Community Arts Education and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Community Programs to Promote Youth Development focuses on essential elements of adolescent well-being and healthy development. It offers recommendations for policy, practice, and research to ensure that programs are well designed to meet young people's developmental needs.

Professor James S. Catterall of UCLA her presents his analyses of long-term outcomes for the students featured in Champions of Change a decade ago, 12,000 students now followed through age 26.

This toolkit prepared by the Walker Art Center provides resources to help start an art program for youth based from thier experiences creating their own programs.

This research draws upon data from a ten-year national study that describes academic, personal, social and civic outcomes of out-of-school programs on students. Results showed that context of learning is important and that out-of-school youth organizations fill an “institutional gap” where traditional social institutions (e.g. schools, family and church) fall short of meeting the needs of students. While all organizations (athletic-academic, service, and arts-based) provided mentoring relationships, collaborative group dynamics, and a balance of play and work, arts-based

On March 14, 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosted a convening in Washington, DC to showcase some of the nation’s most compelling studies and evidence-based programs that have identified cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes from arts interventions.