Declaration of Higher Education Affinity Group
June 23rd, 2008 at 06:31am Silagh White
Many members within the Americans for the Arts work in various capacities of Higher Education. We are faculty, staff, students and administrators who touch various combinations of the tracks of Americans for the Arts. Curriculum, co-curricular activities, civic engagement, advocacy, leadership development, you name it, we do it. Colleges and Universities are collectively the largest US employer of artists, commission new works in various artistic media, train the next generation of artists, classroom teachers, leaders and advocates.
All students will eventually become not only members of the creative workforce, but they will also become parents, voters or future board members. In higher education, we have the chance to nurture a passion for the arts - no matter the chosen major.
Americans for the Arts has the research, programs, resources (and the network is the GREATEST resource) and message. This is an appeal to the Americans for the Arts Board and to the strategic planning process - please develop a partnership with the National Associations of College and University Presidents. Help us inform up. Help our leaders in higher education to inform our own boards of trustees.
This is what I will do for you. I (and my colleagues who respond to this post) will identify the informed Higher Education leaders who are already championing the arts in their institutions - arts for ALL of the institution’s constituents; students, faculty, staff, alumni, business partners, etc.
With your support, we will also identify ourselves (and folks, this is where you sign your “John Hancock”) as a new affinity group within Americans for the Arts. We want more opportunity to network with each other. We want to share our successful deployment of Americans for the Arts programs at our institutions. We respond to effective models by adapting what works on one campus to the individual profile of our own.
In the spirit of our host city of Philadelphia….
We, the members of the Americans for the Arts who work in HIGHER EDUCATION, on this, the twenty-second day of the month of June in the year two thousand and eight, declare ourselves as an AFFINITY GROUP within the Americans for the Arts. We accept the responsibility of our sharing the knowledge and message of this noble and venerable organization with our complex and opportunity rich campuses. We pledge to work laterally, across the various vertical organizational structures within, so that we can better inform not only the next generation of consumers, but the next generation of citizens.
- Silagh White
4 Comments Add your own
1. Alfred Fredel | June 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
As a member of the Higher Ed community, I agree with Silagh and fully support the document submitted on this blog.
2. Carol Brown | June 24th, 2008 at 11:44 am
The goals of AFTA broadly support Arts Education and Arts in Education. To be specifically valuable to these communities which ultimately feed into arts careers, arts appreciation, the creative business community, etc., there needs to be cyclical communication between P-12 (preschool through high school) education, higher ed, and the business sector. To those of us in education, this is a natural fit; why is this not being addressed and enbraced in the work of AFTA?
We were lucky to have a strong Arts in Ed thread that was very supportive of the Teaching Artist. I agree w/ Silagh that there needs to be a strengthening of communication between the multiple education communities and both the educators and administrators in these sectors.
3. Alexis Clark | June 24th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Yes.
4. Scott Walters | June 25th, 2008 at 8:06 am
I would like to be involved with this affinity group.
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