Jessica Wilt

Another school year draws to a close and I feel like I’m out of control spinning all over the boroughs of New York City from one commitment to the other with “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” playing in my head. Is anyone else out there spinning round like a record, baby? Okay, that makes me sound old.

Next month I’ll be leading a Career360 Roundtable session at the 2012 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in San Antonio. The topic: Community Involvement: Taking the “I Shoulds” Out of Your Life.

I chuckled upon my realization at how perfect the topic of overcommitment is for me; hence, the spinning-out-of-control vertigo I’m now experiencing.

Many arts administrators are expected to serve on panels, boards, and committees in addition to joining advocacy-related campaigns and other volunteer activities outside of the day-to-day full time job.

I’d like to explore this “I should or I shouldn’t” conversation a bit. Are arts administrators volunteer-driven because of their love for the field? Because there seems to be unspoken expectations? Out of necessity? Or a combination of all three?

I volunteer my time and energy mainly because I am passionate about arts education. I enjoy being connected to networks outside of my job, learning new things, traveling, and meeting some really interesting people…but sometimes it can feel overwhelming.

Locally, I’m involved with the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable as a former board member currently seeking reelection and a Teaching Artist Affairs committee member. Through Roundtable connections I’ve become more engaged with advocacy at the local and state levels. My involvement with the organization continues to inform me of relevant issues I face each day through my work in New York. (Hint: Common Core, evaluation, and testing).

How about sitting on a grant review panel?

Recently I thought I had lost my mind after receiving less than a week’s deadline to review and rank 35 grant applications (over 300 pages) from a cultural agency. I was however, pleasantly surprised to find the dialogue incredibly engaging and enlightening. I not only walked away with a greater sense of pride for the arts in my community, I learned what makes for a strong and fundable grant proposal—a critical lesson.

Interested in joining a school board? Why, sure!

Through a charter school board mixer hosted by Link Education earlier this year, I was introduced to an arts focused charter school where after going through a nominating and vetting process, last month I was elected to join the VOICE Charter School Board in Queens. I will see first-hand how a dedicated school board, a principal, and his staff collaboratively work together on building and governing a school that uses vocal music as its common curricular thread.

One of my favorite volunteer responsibilities is doing cool things like writing ARTSblog posts as an Arts Education Council member with Americans for the Arts (and then Tweeting about it). My service on the council has connected me to people from all over the country and engaged me in conversations about arts and education advocacy at the national level. How often do you get a chance to lobby for the arts in-person on Capitol Hill and sit next to Alec Baldwin?

I see these activities as an extension of my workday, which by choice leaves little time for anything else. Did I mention the five-month old Labrador puppy I’ve got sitting at my feet, licking my toes, and whining to go outside and play as I write?

I’m not sure we, as arts administrators, can make a clear divide between work and everything else.

How do expectations to volunteer and serve in addition to your normal work and life obligations (i.e. the puppy) change how you organize your time outside of the office?

I’m looking forward to continuing this conversation in San Antonio.

Maybe during times of crazy as an alternative to thinking “You Spin Me Round” I’ll start envisioning myself spinning into a happier, more attractive Wonder Woman instead.

Which brings me to the next step on my volunteer “I should” list—volunteer for a campaign and eventually run for public office.

Just wait America; I have so much more to give!

They even had band members play outside of the meeting deciding their fate.

This is exactly the type of simple advocacy that draws the attention of local media and the members of the school board. Check out their rally and excellent student and parent comments from the York Daily Record website:

In the end, five art and music positions were restored by the board as well as three guidance counselor positions and the football, basketball, volleyball, and track programs.

If you have any examples of local school board advocacy at work, tell us in the comments below and if you want to know more about the many influences on local arts education programs, be sure to check out our arts education webinar series (free to members of Americans for the Arts or $35 per session).

Jason Yoon

One of my first “real” jobs was as an art specialist at a start-up charter elementary school. We did a lot of grading. The school was developing a comprehensive academic scope and sequence. Report cards reflected maybe 100-some skills and standards by subject. Teachers spent hours assessing each student.

As an idealistic young educator, the complexity of the thing was actually exciting. I couldn’t wait to see my “enrichment” section of the report card and the skills and standards in the arts I was responsible for. I then found that I had the smallest section of the report card:

4=Excellent 3=Good 2=Needs work 1=Seriously deficient

That’s it?

This school had mapped skills and standards to the minutest details and I only got two vague behaviors? I wanted credit for teaching my kids important and real things too!

I bring this up not to criticize the school. The school has expanded admirably since, received national recognition, expanded their arts programs and I figure now has a more robust method for assessing arts learning.

In that small example, is the dilemma that faces the art world right? We want to be taken seriously.

And one message is that we can get there by being graded and measured in easy-to-digest numbers like other subjects or fields. The institutional message then was that I was just the art teacher. Put simply, the school’s charter probably wasn’t going to be revoked if my kids couldn’t paint.

But we have to be careful not to adopt the fallacies of the “accountability” movement, too.

Instead of taking the worst lessons of other sectors in evaluation, research, accountability, measurement (or whatever terms you want to use), we in the arts have a responsibility to LEAD, not follow in developing new ways of finding and sharing knowledge and insight.

Isn’t that what we do in the arts? We see new and exciting ways to do things. We break paradigms, we challenge prevailing wisdom, we provoke. We make trouble. Our approach to “evaluation” should be just as provocative as our practice.

And why look to the accountability movements of other sectors?

Short-term and narrow quantitative performance measures contributed to the collapse of our global economy, we have falsified test scores, and potentially unhealthy quotas for arrests and police stop and frisks.

We can debate the particulars of each of these controversies, but overall it’s a troubling pattern. It indicates the problem with applying supposedly rigorous business world methods to complex human work.

More troubling, these instances involve seemingly straightforward quantitative indicators of performance: test scores, stock price, and arrests. Yet we still have very real ongoing questions about what any of it means. And that’s not even talking about the less measured disparate impacts (communities of color suffering from aggressive policing, children receiving less art and science in test-focused schools, unchecked financial engineering etc.).

In Policy Paradox, Deborah Stone writes about the dangers and unintended consequences and incentives that arise from the use of performance measures in public policy. It’s also big business.

What is the middle ground between rigor and authenticity in the arts? How do we know what we’re accomplishing?

Maybe we just ask.

Years ago, at the end of a talk with the evaluation director of a major national foundation, I asked him about “evaluating our impact.” He asked, “How many kids do you have in the program?”

“About 12.”

“Do you know them well?”

“I think so.”

He told me to just call each of my students at the end of the cycle, to have an open-ended conversation about what they got out of the program and what could make it better. It was only 12 students, I should be able to get to them all and if I couldn’t that was a sign of something too. “Don’t over think it.” Just ask.

So, regarding this question of social impact, on a bigger scale, that’s what we’re working on at New Urban Arts.

More specifically, through the Ford Foundation ARTOGRAPHY program, we’re currently working with our founder, Tyler Denmead Ph. D., on an ethnographic arts research framework for our community studio.

We’re pulling from lots of different sources and fields for inspiration, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot, Maribel Alvarez, one of the ARTOGRAPHY documentarians, the growing field of publicly engaged scholarship, ethnography, participatory research, and more. We’re also including with this an exhaustive literature review relevant to our context as a community youth art studio.

We’re not sure what our framework is going to look like yet, but our efforts are coming out of a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo that we feel is presented to us as practitioners. If we choose not to evaluate in a traditional sense, we are irresponsible managers unaccountable to our publics. But if we embrace this performance measurement and accountability framework, we start to kill what makes our spaces so relevant in the first place.

I argue that there are multiple paths to being rigorous, about knowing your work and being accountable. But we want to own “rigor” and “accountability” on our terms and in new and creative ways and most importantly honor first voice, through a framework for our diverse participants “to describe and interpret what they do and why it is meaningful to them.”

Traditional impact evaluation is about proving something happened, that some change in condition occurred as a result of some intervention you’ve isolated, but the reality is that “proof” is elusive. Millions of dollars have been poured into trying to prove things perhaps somewhat dubiously.

What we’re interested in is sharing how our community comes together to generate new knowledge and to share that knowledge through the voices of our community.

To follow our progress, please join us at www.newurbanarts.org.

Stephanie Riven

I recently spent a semester at Harvard as a visiting practitioner in the Arts in Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

While working directly with the Arts in Education Program, I was also able to audit classes at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and attend special lectures and programs sponsored by the Harvard Business School. Needless to say, the entire experience was fascinating on many levels.

As one might expect, the differences between the course offerings and student culture in the above mentioned schools were striking—yet many of the future challenges students in these different institutions will face are the same.

Based on my experience, the talented students in the Arts in Education Program tended to orient themselves towards issues related to process—the process of learning and the integration of concepts in advocacy, education, research, and policy. Though each of these students expressed a deep commitment to their work, many also expressed trepidation about entering an uncertain job market that is famously under-resourced and socially marginalized.

By comparison, the students I encountered at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School were excited about their potential to begin something new. They were learning how to become entrepreneurs by developing skills related to organizing, team-building, and risk-taking while they were also growing in their understanding of how to garner financial, cultural, and social capital for their future ventures.

These students were learning how to network, build creative associations and think through the necessary steps to arrive at innovative solutions and profitable business ideas. They were learning that experimentation is central to everything they want to do in the future. These students were excited about creating or being a part of something big—and their enthusiasm was contagious!

You might not expect that the two groups of students would approach their work similarly; but, as part of the arts in education curriculum, students are encouraged to spend time developing entrepreneurial projects that they then present to a fictitious foundation. This past academic year, several Harvard Arts in Education students recognized that the skills and ideas afforded to public policy and business school students are likewise necessary to develop effective leaders in arts education.

Projects included everything from using technology as a means of furthering museum participation to developing online literacy initiatives that use multimedia storytelling techniques to encourage creation and collaboration amongst their users. In short, the Arts in Education students received first-hand experience as entrepreneurs.

In reflecting on the current set of arts leaders, I would hope that they, too, could have some time and space to develop the same entrepreneurial perspective and business acumen as those in the business world.

As a consultant working with small and midsized nonprofit organizations, I find that many arts education organizations have budgets that remain stagnant—they are in a vicious starvation cycle because leaders and boards aren’t willing or don’t have the ability to find the necessary capital to launch an earned-income stream, expand programs strategically, commit to an evaluation, or hire the next generation of staff.

One hypothesis is that today’s arts education organizations are reluctant to take on these necessary challenges because we have not given our leaders the tools that they need to reverse the cycle.

This formal and professional level training must include, but not be limited to the following:

•    Identification of the resources that will be needed for their projects whether they involve policy, research, teaching, or advocacy.

•    Practice and support in studying how strategy is developed.

•    Mentorship and training in identifying and making critical decisions that involve the allocation of time, talent, and dollars to the activities that have the greatest impact.

•    Roleplay and training in garnering resources from the wide network of individuals, foundations, corporations, and government agencies that are poised and ready to respond to their requests.

•    Encouragement of experimentation and risk-taking.

Can we learn from the Arts in Education entrepreneurs at Harvard and bring more business focused training to current and future leaders in our field so that organizations can become more vibrant and entrepreneurial?

Photo by Jesse Banks III

Going into high school, you’re still trying to figure out who you are. It became apparent to me why people had existential crises. It’s hard to find out who you are when no one knows your name. When I started high school, I was no longer Carolina Jimenez or CJ.I became my student number (8259745).                       

Locker number (367)

My GPA (2.3)

My test scores (97 percentile in English; 35 percentile in Math; 85 percentile in Writing/Reading; I still have no clue what that means…)

I became more obsessed with how I looked on paper than what I was learning. I felt myself being remodeled from a human being into a receptacle for lectures and test scores. Learning should result from curiosity, not obligation.

~ Carolina Jimenez, May 2010 (senior year of high school)

Photo by Jesse Banks III

And then, in a slightly embarrassed way, I explain that I’m the chair of a youth advisory board at a local afterschool art studio and that I’m in the midst of a self-designed curriculum in organic farming and sustainable living practices. […]

In some ways, this plan was my way of proving to the academic world that I can educate myself without desks and textbooks. […]

So, part of the reason I wanted a huge project like this book was to help cope with the idea of heading into that great big unknown called college life.

It helped me hash out this year in a way that I wouldn’t have without it. It forced me to reflect on what I did this year and what made it important and relevant to my potential future in the academic world

~ Artist Statement Excerpt, Carolina Jimenez, February 2011

———————————————————————-

Jason Yoon (JY): I think these pieces [pictured above] powerfully talk about “measuring impact.” Now that some time has passed since you’ve made these, how are you thinking about these issues now?

Carolina Jimenez (CJ): I’ve been thinking about what Newt Gingrich said, that poor kids should clean their school’s bathrooms. I have a real problem with this attitude that [certain] kids should always be working, that they always have to be on task, always follow directions.

What happens to youth if they don’t have a place to explore and have freedom and space? I think New Urban Arts lets students explore and balances that with always questioning and challenging their thinking. Our audience [at New Urban Arts] are students who have very little agency in their lives, they are a population who’s generally not listened to. What does it mean to free someone to self evaluate and for it to happen organically?

It’s really important to give all kids a voice, not just privileged kids. My entire life, I’ve lived in really small apartments where we didn’t have lots of space. I couldn’t write on the walls because we didn’t own our own home, I could never make a lot of noise because I couldn’t wake up my neighbors. New Urban Arts was the place I could do that.

JY: You’ve made art about being a trouble maker. [CJ screenprinted a series of popular shirts emblazoned with the words “Be the trouble you want to see in the world” tweaking the famous Gandhi quote.]

CJ: Without New Urban Arts, I don’t I would have ever learned to question privilege. When I think about trouble making and privilege, I think of Dennis the Menace.

JY: That’s a really interesting way to talk about the inequity of which kids gets more leeway to be “trouble makers” in our society. Dennis the Menace lives in what seems like an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood that probably isn’t aggressively policed, he’s not subject to stop-and-frisks, and he’s not racially profiled. By virtue of his privilege, he has more freedom to play, to get in trouble. But shouldn’t all kids have those chances?

CJ: Before New Urban Arts, I was really afraid of everything. Growing up, my mom was so focused on keeping me safe in a neighborhood where safety was a big concern. New Urban Arts was where that started to change, it was a place that embraced mistakes, it affirmed me when I did well and questioned and challenged me when I didn’t. I read an article about why it’s important to teach your kid to argue, because it teaches them to explain themselves. And that’s something that I learned from artist mentors at New Urban Arts.

JY: Maybe “making trouble” should receive more attention as a form of social impact.

Mark Rodriguez

Upon reviewing a blog entry about The Arts and Achievement in At-Risk Youth study released by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) earlier this month, I ran across a respondent who stated, “It’s great to have all of these studies, but how does it help me and my organization? How can small or midsized arts organizations measure their impact without the resources of large institutions like the NEA?”

The following shares the story of how Changing Worlds, a midsized Chicago-based educational arts nonprofit went from basic surveys and pre- and post-residency exercises to a longitudinal study that improved our practice, reaffirmed the quality of our program, and helped build an organizational culture of inquiry.

In 2003, I became the executive director of a small start-up nonprofit that had little to no infrastructure in place to assess its programs. We had lots of informal data and some feedback from program partners. I knew immediately that if we were going to grow, thrive and succeed, we had to identify our unique niche, solidify our program model and select program inquiry questions we wanted to explore.

From 2003–2008, we went through various renditions of evaluation tools and we even contracted with three independent evaluation consultants. After five years, we learned some new things, developed the basic capacity to measure the impact of our residency programs and invested lots of time. While this helped us gain insight into our short-term impact, it didn’t address the potential long-term impact and implications of our program.

In 2009, we set out to do just that, measure the long-term implications and impact of our in-school integrated arts, cultural awareness and literacy residency on students. Given the program’s unique structure, with its combination of writing, arts, and cultural awareness activities, we were looking for answers that could not be found by looking at similar programs.

We started by scaling back to scale up. We decreased the number of in-school residencies we had in order to invest those resources in evaluation efforts that could help us measure our long-term impact.

We conducted a request for proposals, seeking evaluation and school partners that would embark on a three-year journey with us. In 2009, we partnered with three Chicago Public Schools and the Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) at Loyola University to launch our study.

We began in the 2008–2009 school year, working with groups of fourth graders and tracking them over the course of three years. We used data collected from sixth graders during the program launch year at each school to serve as a delayed comparison. We used all of the same assessments tools with the comparison group and planned to compare the results with our students when they reached the sixth grade.

Students taking part in a Changing Worlds activity.

The results were greater than we had anticipated. Students in our program outperformed comparison group students in all areas measured.

While we recognize that our program isn’t the sole factor connected to academic outcomes, we found that test scores for students in Changing Worlds’ program were greater than control group students, with an average positive difference of 11.5 points percentage points on standardized test across all schools. A review of test score data over time revealed that Changing Worlds’ students who were performing at a lower level than nonparticipants caught up after one year of being involved in the program. Over the three year period, Changing Worlds’ students continued to outperform nonparticipants at higher percentage levels each year.

While the quantitative data is critical, the many things we learned from the stories we collected from students and their families were equally important and rewarding.

“The program opened my eyes to new ways to express myself.”
”The program helped me learn more about my peers and how to work together.”
“The program taught me how to look at things from different point of views.”
“The program changed my life.”

These quotes from students highlight the not-so-measureable social impact and lifelong skills students gain from the arts.

While the academic point gains, increase in writing scores, and ability to demonstrate greater artistic capacity is important, the jewels are in the student feedback and the value of the arts that goes beyond a test, but leads to the global, innovative citizens of tomorrow.

For more information on “Unlocking Pathways to Learning,” our three-year study, visit www.changingworlds.org.

Raymond Tymas Jones

National Arts Advocacy Day is significant because it grants us an opportunity to gather as a community to reflect on the role of contemporary artists in the 21st century. No matter what the chosen art form, the passion to do art and to be art is born out of an insatiable yearning to make beauty, to make sense, and even to make waves.

As artists, we are summoned to bear witness of the truth of the human experience…the human condition and truth is more than simply facts. It is realness of life that is imbued with the psychological, emotional, spiritual elements of living that is not always easily accessible. It is this sense of urgency to communicate that artists find avenues to connect through music, theatre, film, dance, art, and literature.

For example, the powerful play by American playwright Stephen Adly Guigis, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, explores in a witty, provocative, and sometimes-funny manner, questions about love and redemption through the story of a man who is considered the most notorious villain in human history. The genesis of this kind of art is the visceral reality that only comes from self-understanding. It is the quest for self-understanding that gives way to constant questioning, observing, celebrating, and revering the complexity, mystery, and beauty of humanity. Self-understanding fortifies us from self-deception and easy consolations.

We, as artists, are the first beneficiaries of the power of the arts to tell our personal story that mirrors our own realities. Each of us can be an alchemist, taking our ideas and understanding of the world around us along with our imagination and creativity to transform them into precious elements of universal elixir.

I believe that artists have the responsibility to hold the mirror up to nature and give a truthful account of the human condition and to do so in a manner that can touch the soul and heart as well as the mind.

Fifty years ago in a speech at Amherst College, John F. Kennedy proclaimed the importance of art when he said, “art establishes the basic human truth, which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.”

Imagining the significant place of the arts in our society, he said, “I look forward to an America, which will reward achievements in the arts as we reward achievements in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic achievement and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America, which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.”

Even though there are some who feel that our commitment to contribute to the human spirit through our study and work in the arts and humanities leads to nowhere, I prefer to seek a life of meaning—of purpose. To know true meaning and purpose, it requires often going against the status quo, being the solitary figure.

It is the role of the arts community to affect civilization. It is the role of the artist to steadily raise the standards of artistic achievements and enlarge cultural opportunities for all citizens. As artists, it is our plight to be motivated by our concern for justice, for our nation’s greater strength!

As Kennedy said, “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

Rachel Grossman

I developed my deep fondness for assessment over 12 years in theatre education and community programming and I bring that affinity into my work as an artistic leader for dog & pony dc, the administrative leader for Washington Improv Theater, and a “chief experience officer” focused on community building and civic discourse through arts participation.

Why am I fond of measurement?

As a box-checker, it provides a tremendous sense of accomplishment. As a lifelong learner, it allows reflection on choices I make and their effect…in order to make stronger/more interesting or daring choices in the future. As a manager, it supports the creation and execution of successful programming and initiatives.

I grew up as an arts educator early in the assessment and evaluation movement in regional theatre education.

I learned some valuable lessons:

• be realistic (you can only accomplish so much in 45 minutes with 30 third graders);
• plans can be adjusted (and improved) when you know the endgame;
• assessment is linked to impact and change;
• if you can observe it, you can measure it.

It was no surprise when I fell head-over-heels for Theatre Bay Area and Wolf Brown’s Intrinsic Impact study, which reaches beyond measuring success by ticket revenue and surveys that only ask if audience liked/not a show.

The Intrinsic Impact approach is comprehensive: ask artists what they thought the impact of their work would be on the audience and then ask the audience the same questions. Tabulate. Compare. Reflect. Discuss. Look at trends over time. Reflect. Learn. [insert sigh of contentment]

For me, the takeaway of the Intrinsic Impact work is that it positions artistic leaders, and eventually theatre artists, to be more intentional. They can base choices on the effect they want to have on an audience, and then to gauge that effect. It has the potential to result in increased engagement between artists/art/audience and to reframe the conversation about the role of theatre and value of art in civic life.

But here’s the thing: I’m feeling in the minority.

Back in the day, arts educators and teaching artists across the country resisted the use of outcomes-based assessment models with protests of:

Rachel teaching a class.

“You’re confining our creativity.”

“You’re devaluing our work.”

“You’re requiring us to justify our existence.”

And even: “You can’t measure what we teach.”

I believe this was largely a reaction to an unfamiliar practice first introduced by funders and not arts educators; this lack of familiarity exacerbated by the limited formal education training of most arts education and teaching artists.

I am seeing similar reactions to Intrinsic Impact work. A recent discussion started about asking audience to describe their experience of performances, but quickly morphed into objections to allowing the audience to dictate your next season. Wha?

I was reminded of objections from artistic colleagues not even a year prior:

“We can’t measure the effect of our work.”

“The audience will either ‘get it’ or not.”

“It is subjective—the audience makes their own meaning. There is no right or wrong reaction.”

“I know I’ve achieved it when I see it, but I can’t describe it.”

“The audience has no right to judge my art.”

Measurement is once more rejected as an unfamiliar practice from outside the field with no value—a perception reinforced because when we do measure success it is by butts in seats, dollars in hand, and favorable/unfavorable reviews.

The Intrinsic Impact approach is linked to the transformational power of live performance, not ticket revenue. As theatre artists, we all believe that artistic engagement has a positive impact: broadening perspective, expanding capacity for empathy, ability to deliberate, and desire to improve ourselves and our world.

I propose that art makers ease into measuring impact by trying some of the approaches of educators:

• What is the essential question of the work–the open-ended question that frames audience inquiry?  What ideas or understandings will audience “uncover” through the performance?
• What behaviors do you want to see the audience engage in during this performance? When you see them do those things, what message does that send you?
• What activity do you want audience involved in immediately following a performance of this show?
• What will the audience learn or be inclined to do?

Then:

1) Watch the audience during performances.

2) Ask the audience (comment card or emailed Google form)

• What did the show make them think about?
• Did they [insert list behaviors] during the show?
• What questions about the work or for the artists linger after the show?

3) Look over all the answers.

This is your first step toward exploring the effect of your work.

Once you have waded into the pool, I promise: it gets much easier to digest the different areas or “constructs” of Intrinsic Impact. At first glance, it can be intimidating. But the only way we are going to take control of the conversation about “why art matters” and “art’s effect of the community” is to direct it and engage all the participants (e.g. artists and audience).

Measurement is scary. It requires us to make intentional choices. It holds us accountable to ourselves and the work we are dedicated to do first and foremost. But it shows the impact of our programming in action. It can tell the story of why we matter, and that’s a story we should all want to tell.

Alec Baldwin and Robert Lynch speak during the Arts Advocacy Day Congressional Arts Kick-Off.

This week I’m in Los Angeles attending a meeting of the U.S. Travel & Tourism Advisory Board and hosting an Arts Action Fund event with Los Angeles arts leaders. As I flew out here, I was thinking about the incredible events of last week that impacted arts education.

It all began with the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) Spring Forum April 12-13, followed by a combined meeting of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network and our Americans for the Arts State Arts Action Network on April 15. The week concluded with our 25^th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy and Arts Advocacy Day on April 16-17.

For those that weren’t able to attend these events, I thought I would share some of my experiences with you.

The AEP forum began with an exciting announcement—the National Endowment for the Arts named Ayanna Hudson, currently with Arts for All in Los Angeles, as their new director of arts education. Ayanna has been a program partner with, and a congressional witness for, Americans for the Arts during her time at Arts for All, and I’m really pleased she’s moving into this national role.

PBS NewsHour education correspondent John Merrow was the closing keynote at the forum, reminding us to let the 80 percent (the percentage of Americans that do not have school-aged children) know the good work that we are doing and how they can support us. In his words: “Don’t plead, lead.”

The next morning, I had the pleasure of speaking to forum attendees, reminding them that their voice is important in supporting arts education and that they are not alone.

I also had the privilege of witnessing a moving performance by students from A Place to Be—an original musical called, How Far I’ve Come. The performance was co-authored by a 17-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, who sees her cerebral palsy not as a disability, but as a gift to teach others about acceptance.

The performance was a testament to the power of the arts education, as therapy for students, as a creative outlet for our youth, and as a way to make a difference in our world.

Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities also gave attendees a sneak peak of their new initiative, Turnaround Arts, which launched this past Monday.

On Sunday, our State Arts Action Network held a joint meeting with the members of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network.

State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education President Lynn Tuttle gave an update on the revision of the National Arts Standards, and walked the group through an overview of what she called a “tornado of education reform” currently happening in our schools. In light of the velocity of change, the group discussed ways that the arts could be a solution to many of the problems that the “tornado of reform” is hoping to address.

Monday evening was our annual Nancy Hanks Lecture, a speech intended to stimulate discussion of policy and social issues affecting the arts. After a rousing introduction by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maureen Dowd, Oscar-nominated actor Alec Baldwin captivated the audience with his personal journey through the arts. Our own Board Chair Ken Fergeson, Ovation Chairman Ken Solomon, and 2012 Arts Advocacy Day Co-Chair/actor/author Hill Harper also gave brief remarks.

On Tuesday, I witnessed over 550 grassroots advocates visit Capitol Hill to demonstrate their commitment to the arts and arts education and ask their members of Congress to do the same.

Several congressional leaders offered their support, including Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the U.S. Senate education committee, who stated on the Senate floor:

“Mr. President, I ask you: How can we produce graduates who are creative and collaborative if we don’t value the arts in our society and teach it in our schools?”

We also received an update on the Obama Administration’s efforts to support arts education at a White House briefing that afternoon.

Many well-known artists joined us on Capitol Hill at a series of bipartisan meetings with members of Congress and staff, and each of them mentioned the importance of arts education. American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance producer/judge Nigel Lythgoe bemoaned the loss of our musical heritage and told Congress that arts education in schools is THE most important area to put money into.

A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts has confirmed the correlation between arts education and better academic and social outcomes for our youth. Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education released a report, showing that the nation’s poorest students, the ones who could benefit the most from arts education, are receiving it the least.

This means that even after the excitement in D.C., we still have work to do to advance arts education in our country.

Although Advocacy Day is only a two-day event, our year-round work of advocacy continues.

Many thanks and congratulations to all the arts education advocates who traveled to the District to make it such an incredible week!

(Arts Watch is the bi-weekly cultural policy publication of Americans for the Arts, covering news in a variety of categories. Subscribe to Arts Watch or follow @artswatch on Twitter to receive up-to-the-minute news.)

Jon Schwartz

Throughout my career as a teacher, I’ve been faced with many situations that required some creative ingenuity to help insure my students received the best chance at education in my classroom and beyond.

In my first grade classroom at Garrison Elementary in San Diego this year, I’ve been faced with helping non-native English speaking students learn English while assimilating in the classroom and culture at large.

In the past, I’ve successfully adopted out-of-the-box approaches to connect with my students (such as the student blogging program I started with my fourth and fifth graders last year) and this situation seemed ripe with the possibility of doing something similar.

As I watched my students tire of the old classics like “Old MacDonald” and “B-I-N-G-O” I decided to try a different tactic. I loaded my iPhone with some good, old-fashioned Blues standards and got those kids rocking! I could never have predicted what came next.

As you can see from our YouTube video below, there was something about the Blues that really seemed to reach the kids on a foundational, universal level. Reluctant readers were excitedly sounding out the words to “Deep Elem Blues” as the class read through the lyrics on our LCD screen. Others would retrieve their sheets of printed lyrics to review throughout the day. And still others just enjoyed gettin’ down with the blues and would happily perform their own routines in front of the class.

It’s been a privilege to work alongside these kids and to see the first-hand effects of our Blues in the classroom program. There are two specific instances that still floor me to this day.

Early on in the year, a non-English speaking student who had moved to San Diego from Mexico in August struggled with communication and classroom involvement. For months, she had been too shy to speak with me or to participate in class.I struggled to find ways to reach her while working with her parents and the school’s support staff, doing everything I could think of to make her take that leap and start speaking.

Then one day, a fellow student convinced her to join the classroom’s recently formed “First Grade Blues Band” and the result was shocking.

Here she was singing “Sweet Home Chicago” in front of the whole class with a HUGE smile on her face. Her peers and the music had emboldened her and she took the leap, speaking English aloud for the first time in class.

A few months later, I faced a similar situation when an Asian girl moved to San Diego and entered our first grade classroom. Unlike the Spanish-speaking students who have the advantage of interacting with many bilingual teachers and peers, this girl had no one and faced severe cultural shock and language barriers.

Working with the school staff and the girl’s parents again, I began to recognize the same amazing phenomenon. This girl was getting into the Blues and the music enabled her to overcome her shyness as she sang with enthusiasm and joy.

Today, both girls are integral parts of our “First Grade Blues Band.” We performed our first official gig at the school talent show a few weeks ago. Since then, we’ve performed at a local street fair and have been invited to perform for the staff and teaching credential candidates at California State University San Marcos.

In addition to putting on a great show, our band demonstrates irrefutable evidence of the positive role that music plays in education.

To find out more about the pedagogy behind music and I am using music in our classroom, please visit KidsLikeBlues.org.

And you don’t want to miss watching these incredible kids get their Blues on with a rousing rendition of “Sweet Home Chicago” at their recent talent show. Get ready to rock with this video of the “First Grade Blues Band”…

Candy Nguyen Smirnow

I came to Arts Advocacy Day for the first time this year not knowing exactly what to expect.

I’ve never considered myself a political person. I rarely sign petitions and have never campaigned for any one organization or candidate. I’ve just always been very passive when it came to politics, most certainly because of my Gen X mentality.

So, when my boss asked me to join her I was hesitant, wondering does my voice really matter? But, I’ve learned a lot in the business world, and one of those things is never to pass up an opportunity to learn something new. So, I quickly reconsidered the opportunity to visit Capitol Hill.

As I walked into day one, I was amazed by the congregation of over 500 advocates. I was especially surprised by the number of young people who were participating.

When I was their age, I would’ve never even considered joining something like Arts Advocacy Day. I grew up in the public education system in Southern California, which unfortunately did not have much of an arts-infused curriculum.

In elementary school we had a “music cart,” where once a week Mr. Nelson would roll into the classroom with his keyboard and pass out the maracas and tambourines. It was everyone’s favorite day of class, but unfortunately it didn’t come quite often enough.

The rest of my music education was from afternoons watching MTV, dance lessons from Soul Train, and the theatrical and visual arts were consumed from whatever television programming was offered at the time.

I remember wishing I could go to a school like the one portrayed in Fame. I was a child that was brought up on pop culture, just like most of us were. But despite my lack of formal arts education, I was still drawn to the arts, just like most of us are.

When I ask others about the arts education they received in elementary school, I often hear stories of the instruments they received in fourth grade or the recorders they were given as Hill Harper jokingly referred to as the “ghetto flute” during the Nancy Hanks Lecture. I actually had to ask someone what a recorder was because it wasn’t part of my educational experience. Funnily enough, I was kind of envious. I wish I had a recorder!

I wondered how many other kids grew up like me, never having the chance to pick up an instrument just to try it out.

This was the real reason why I wanted to participate in Arts Advocacy Day. Today, so many children in U.S. schools do not have the opportunity to experience music, dance, theatre, or visual art first-hand. And I wonder how their overall growth as an individual will be affected by this.

Will they be able to compete in the global economy?

Will they have the creativity to innovate?

The arts are an integral part of our daily lives whether we realize it or not from the ringtone on our phone to the screensaver on our laptop, someone created it, someone designed it, someone imagined it.

It is my hope that the conversations I contributed to at Arts Advocacy Day will motivate our leaders to take action to restore funding for impactful programs like the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts in Education and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities appropriations.

As a united voice, our collective efforts and combined passion for the arts have made a strong influence on our respective legislators. I am optimistic that we’ve reminded them that the arts are not a luxury and that we should do all we can to ensure that everyone no matter their economic or social status should have the chance to experience the arts first-hand either in school or within their local community.

Arts Advocacy Day was a first for me, and after this experience I know that my voice does indeed matter and it is further strengthened and volumized by our collective collaboration.

Randy Cohen

Almost one year ago, I posted The Top Ten Reasons to Support the Arts in response to a business leader who wanted to make a compelling case for government and corporate contributions to the arts.

Being a busy guy, he didn’t want a lot to read: “Keep it to one page, please.”

With the arts advocacy season once again upon us…(who am I kidding, it’s always upon us!)…here is my updated list for 2012.

10 Reasons to Support the Arts

1. True prosperity. The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, goodness, and beauty. They help us express our values, build bridges between cultures, and bring us together regardless of ethnicity, religion, or age. When times are tough, the arts are salve for the ache.

2. Improved academic performance. Students with an education rich in the arts have higher GPAs and standardized test scores, lower drop-out rates, and even better attitudes about community service—benefits reaped by students regardless of socioeconomic status. Students with four years of arts or music in high school average 100 points better on their SAT scores than students with one-half year or less.

3. Arts are an industry. Arts organizations are responsible businesses, employers, and consumers. Nonprofit arts organizations generate $166 billion in economic activity annually, supporting 5.7 million jobs and generating nearly $30 billion in government revenue. Investment in the arts supports jobs, generates tax revenues, and advances our creativity-based economy.

4. Arts are good for local merchants. The typical arts attendee spends $27.79 per person, per event, not including the cost of admission on items such as meals, parking, and babysitters. Non-local arts audiences (who live outside the county) spend nearly twice as much as local arts attendees ($40.19 vs. $19.53)—valuable revenue for local businesses and the community.

5. Arts are the cornerstone of tourism. Arts travelers are ideal tourists—they stay longer and spend more. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that the percentage of international travelers including museum visits on their trip has grown annually since 2003 (17 to 24 percent), while the share attending concerts and theater performances increased five of the past seven years (13 to 17 percent since 2003).

6. Arts are an export industry. U.S. exports of arts goods (everything from movies to paintings to jewelry) grew to $64 billion in 2010. With U.S. imports at just $23 billion, the arts achieved a $41 billion trade surplus in 2010.

7. Building the 21st century workforce. Reports by The Conference Board show creativity is among the top-five applied skills sought by business leaders—with 72 percent saying creativity is of high importance when hiring. The biggest creativity indicator? A college arts degree. Their Ready to Innovate report concludes, “…the arts—music, creative writing, drawing, dance—provide skills sought by employers of the 3rd millennium.”

8. Healthcare. Nearly one-half of the nation’s healthcare institutions provide arts programming for patients, families, and even staff. 78 percent deliver these programs because of their healing benefits to patients—shorter hospital stays, better pain management, and less medication.

9. Stronger communities. University of Pennsylvania researchers have demonstrated that a high concentration of the arts in a city leads to higher civic engagement, more social cohesion, higher child welfare, and lower poverty rates. A vibrant arts community ensures that young people are not left to be raised solely in a pop culture and tabloid marketplace.

10. Creative Industries. The Creative Industries are arts businesses that range from nonprofit museums, symphonies, and theaters to for-profit film, architecture, and advertising companies. An analysis of Dun & Bradstreet data counts 904,581 businesses in the U.S. involved in the creation or distribution of the arts that employ 3.3 million people—representing 4.25 percent of all businesses and 2.15 percent of all employees, respectively.

11. What is your #11? Share with us in the comments below…

Want to post these reasons on your wall or take it to a meeting with your mayor? Download these 10 Reasons to Support the Arts in 2012 from our main website.

Keep up the great work!

Arts Watch is the bi-weekly cultural policy publication of Americans for the Arts, covering news in a variety of categories. Subscribe to Arts Watch or follow @artswatch on Twitter to receive up-to-the-minute news.

Sahar Javedani

If you’re reading this now, chances are that you’re in a place of contemplative or active transition—and I commend you!

Many of you know that after seven years of working as a choreographer with parallel work in nonprofit arts administration and education in New York City, I recently moved to Philadelphia to start the next chapter of my life which included re-evaluating my commitment to a career in nonprofit administration.

In my last two years in New York City I had aligned myself with an organization that channeled some of my greatest strengths (dance education, career/professional development, nonprofit administration) into one role. After years working at least three simultaneous jobs, I convinced myself that I had “arrived.”

What followed was one of the greatest learning periods of my life.

Holding the reigns of running my own program within a larger organization confirmed that I was indeed entrepreneurial, self-driven, motivated, an excellent networker, etc. These talents were coupled with equal frustrations in communications, core values, and logistics within the organization.

I will refrain from going into detail, but I do feel compelled to share some valuable books that encouraged me along the way.

These are just a few of the books that I have found instrumental in shaping my future in the nonprofit sector coupled with periodic re-visitations to this great motivational video:

• One of the most helpful reads I came across was Quitter by Jon Acuff.

• Some of you may be entering the creative workforce with fresh eyes, bright complexions, and unfettered enthusiasm much like this recent article in Business Insider on How Millenials Work.

• Before you start that new job, or even better, agree to an interview, check out best-selling author Rosetta Thurman’s book How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar and her blog post: 11 Reasons Why New College Grads Should Pursue Nonprofit Careers.

• I also found this post by Nonprofit Nate on Why Compensation Matters helpful.

• If you are contemplating a change of environment, re-assessing your commitment to the field, or brainstorming a start-up, I would suggest checking out Dave Ramsay’s EntreLeadership program coupled with Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski.

Do you have any other great reads to add to my list? Feel free to share in the comments below.

Narric Rome

On April 2, the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a study glamorously entitled Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools 1999-2000 and 2009-10.

The surveys that contributed to this report were conducted through the NCES Fast Response Survey System (FRSS), mailed to about 3,400 elementary and secondary school principals and approximately 5,000 music and visual arts teachers.

National arts education leaders, through policy statements, have been calling for this study to be administered for many years, and helped to direct specific funding from Congress to make it possible.

Ten years is a long time to wait for a federal study to be published and finally it has arrived!

This report presents information on the availability and characteristics of arts education programs of those surveyed, broken down by discipline (music, visual arts, dance, and theatre).

• It indicates that while music and visual art are widely available in some form, six percent of the nation’s public elementary schools offer no specific instruction in music, and 17 percent offer no specific instruction in the visual arts.

• Nine percent of public secondary schools reported that they did not offer music, and 11 percent did not offer the visual arts.

• Only three percent offer any specific dance instruction and only four percent offer any specific theatre instruction in elementary schools. In secondary schools the numbers improve somewhat as 12 percent offer dance and 45 percent offer theatre. Sadly, the study was unable to survey dance and theatre specialists because the data sample didn’t have sufficient contact information in those disciplines.

Despite being designated a “core academic subject” in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and being included in mandated elementary school curriculum in 44 states, this survey demonstrates that access to arts education remains elusive to a tremendous number of students across the nation.

This may not be surprising to many following the state of our education system as recent surveys from Common Core and the National Arts Education Foundation have provided fresh evidence of the arts being a victim of the narrowing of the curriculum.

Furthermore, this report mostly found schools with the highest percentage of free or reduced-price lunch-eligible populations significantly less likely to provide students with access to arts education at both the elementary and secondary levels.

This means that the nation’s poorest students, the ones who could benefit the most from arts education, are receiving it the least.

While the FRSS report does provide valuable information about how the arts are being offered in our public schools at the aggregate level—broken down by region, demographic community types, school enrollment size, and population of minority and reduced or free lunch students—the study is unable to provide this on a state by state basis.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at the press conference releasing the report.

Data collection at the state level is essential to ensuring equitable access to arts instruction for all students. Existing state studies indicate an uneven landscape in providing access to arts education.

A current list of state studies is available on our website and the Arts Education Partnership’s state policy database contains further information on state education policies and practices.

In addition to revealing critical equity gaps in access to arts education, this study tells us a little about the quality of arts education such as teacher preparation and availability of instruction to students; the availability of appropriate facilities and equipment for instruction; and the use of standards-based curriculum. Further measures of quality are needed to get a better picture of the status of arts education.

Ultimately, national studies on arts education are rare and more are desperately needed. Virtually every major educational reform effort is built using federal and state data, so data in arts education must be collected with a rigor and sense of purpose equal to that of all other core academic subjects.

While some of the data about access to arts education was encouraging from the FRSS report, daily news reports from across the country continue to show local communities struggling to keep teachers and programs in place.

So what can advocates do to improve arts education?

Americans for the Arts recently published an Arts Education Field Guide that offers an introduction to the various constituencies impacting arts education, from school house to the White House.

The Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network offers a community audit toolkit to help local leaders assess the status of arts education in their communities. For more ideas, check out our list of The Top 10 Ways to Support Arts Education.

As education reform efforts continue at the state and federal levels, advocates can use the resources above to make the case for strengthening arts education locally.

Additional analysis of the FRSS report Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-10 will be forthcoming in the next several weeks.

In the interim, please email us any FRSS or arts education related questions.

Thank you to the research assistance provided by Arts Education Coordinator Kristen Engebretsen and Government Affairs Fellow Kelly Fabian. You can read prepared remarks about the release of the report by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on ED.gov.