ARTSblog

One dyanmo out of Harvard’s grad school in arts education (where so many arts ed dynamo’s first appear) has put together an honest-to-goodness book on the future of arts education–but he’s just now looking for writers.

This is a fantastic place to envision a better arts education, a better education system through the arts, and–ultimately–a better education for America’s students. Here’s a short list of what I might write about in my chapter proposal:

1. New media and arts education; teaching students already empowered as creators and cultural arbitors.
2. The new, local Arts Education Politician; advancing arts education at the local level happens when someone steps up to interface with the adults who make the education decisions–and plays the role of a politician or leader for the issue of arts education.
3. Other stuff I wrote about in another post.

What would you write about?

The call for chapters is listed below Read the rest of this entry »

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 4:35 — 4.2MB)

Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, discusses “United We Serve,” this summer’s national volunteer campaign organized by the Obama Administration. He proposes that the arts community can demonstrate the huge impact it makes in communities across the country through its myriad of arts and volunteer programs.

Find more information at http://serve.artsusa.org.

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We all know that joint-venture partnerships can yield many benefits. In hopes to spark more creative partnerships, here are some interesting partnership examples formed with arts organizations around the country. Some are likely partnerships between arts organizations; others are “unlikely” partnerships, which sometime can often bring in new audiences.

Success, of course, depends on each partner’s willingness and ability to live up to its part of the bargain.

Public Art In Detroit Benefits Community and High School Students
A dozen or so west side high school students created a mural on a three-story-high exterior wall of a vacant building in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood. The project, Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps, provides high school-aged artists with the opportunity to give back to their communities through the creation of public art. The College of Creative Studies (CCS) project was funded by the Skillman Foundation. This project probably solves two problems, it brings arts education to public schools which may have cut art programs and it brings public art to an under-served community. Read the rest of this entry »

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I have a cat that is not quite one-year old. This seemingly has absolutely nothing at all to do with the subject of the state of public and cultural diplomacy in 2009, except that his habit of waking me pre sun-up when the birds start to sing by delivering a scratchy tongue to the nostrils, meant that on the morning when President Obama delivered his groundbreaking speech on Islam, I was in the kitchen making coffee, trying to remember why I like cats at all, and watching our President live, from Cairo, make history yet again.

Fortunately for my cat, I quickly became captivated by the seriousness of the message, and the profoundness of the moment. It seemed important to forget that it was five o’clock in the morning and the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, to listen to a speech that was premised on seeking a “…new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect…” No small task. Read the rest of this entry »

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