ARTSblog

Victoria Plettner-Saunders

When was the last time you attended a student performance in your community? You know the junior theater’s production of My Fair Lady or the young art show at the museum…

Although I spend a good part of my time working to keep arts education in the schools, and many of the client projects I work on are related to student learning in the arts, I don’t get to as many student performances as one might think. I do as many do and opt for the big orchestras from out-of-town, or the modern dance company I’ve seen many times over. Boy have I been missing out!

Last weekend we attended a San Diego Youth Symphony (SDYS) concert at the invitation of our friend and SDYS President and CEO Dalouge Smith.

What I experienced was, in a word, transformational.

To begin with, the students were just phenomenal. The clarinetist showcased in Luigi Bassi’s “Fantasy on Themes” for clarinet from Rigoletto had won their 2011 Orchestra Concerto Competition. She could have easily given many professional musicians a run for their money as she deftly moved over the notes with accuracy and poise.

And the Orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in b minor “Pathetique” was the highlight of the evening. Their powerful execution of the third movement was amazing and not something one would think could come from a group of teenagers in the sunrise of their experience as musicians. This was not amateur hour. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 2%

Over the weekend, former President Bill Clinton made headlines in his home state of Arkansas discussing education. His message was one that many of us already know: the dropout rate is increasing and students are leaving school unprepared for 21^st century jobs.

However, the uniqueness of the President’s message was in his proposed solution—the arts.

Clinton is endorsing a program called A+ Schools that achieves whole school reform by integrating the arts, using project-based learning, and appealing to students’ multiple intelligences.

The A+ program has been nationally recognized “as an effective, research-based strategy for sustainable school reform.”

The program started with a network of schools in North Carolina and has expanded to include schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

You can find out more about the A+ program here and make sure to check out a local TV news report on former President Clinton’s remarks:

Popularity: 12%

Max Donner

Los Angeles took a cue from the success of Art Miami and scheduled six art shows in the space of one week last month. These six shows featured the most popular collecting categories–fine art, photography, prints and posters, modern art, contemporary art, and “affordable art.”

A fortunate coincidence put these excellent art exhibitions directly next to two large commercial trade shows that demonstrated the value of artistic talent in America’s economy. These were the California Gift Show and the Insignia Sportswear Show.

These shows provided hundreds of examples of the economic value of art by showing how quality art and design can transform a five dollar piece of canvas into a fifty dollar giclee print or a five hundred dollar oilskin for elite yacht racing syndicates.

The commercial trade shows also demonstrated the important role that applied art plays in supporting the development of leading edge technology and the creation of good jobs that support local economies.

An overview of the exhibitions at the California Gift Show and the Insignia Sportswear Show quickly showed that commodity-like, undecorated consumer goods like umbrellas, picture frames, sports team uniforms, and caps do not cost much to make and do not generate much quality employment. The same products converted into upscale or luxury consumer products with original art and sophisticated artistic customization command attention of trade show visitors and quickly fill order books. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

John Eger

It’s early in the new year but educators across the country are already making plans for the summer and they are thinking STEAM…with the arts playing a critical role.

As demand for a new workforce to meet the challenges of a global knowledge economy is rapidly increasing, few things could be as important in this period of our nation’s history than an interdisciplinary education that brings the arts and sciences together. Not surprisingly, so-called STEAM Camps signal an increased role for the arts as part of the new curriculum.

Most analysts studying the new global economy agree that the growing “creative and innovative” economy represents America’s salvation. The STEAM camps represent a totally new approach to the curriculum, and forge a new beginning in reinventing K-12 education.

Urban Discovery Academy, a charter school in San Diego has partnered with the University of California at San Diego (UCSD); Concordia University in Mequon, WI, together with the Chicago Lutheran Education Foundation (CELF); and the largest Lutheran school systems in Northern Indiana, and other educational organizations across the country are thinking about or have already started hosting STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) Camps to jumpstart education learning for the new economy.

STEAM is a direct response to STEM, the Bush Initiative called the America Competes Act, which authorized funds to help students earn a bachelor’s degree, math and science teachers to get teaching credentials, and provide additional money to help align K-12 math and science curricula to better prepare students for college. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

The Art Institutes and Americans for the Arts are accepting entries for our 2012 Poster Design Competition through February 3. Winners will earn up to a full tuition scholarship to study at one of the more than 45 Art Institutes across the country.

This year’s competition challenges high school seniors and graduates from the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico to design a poster that best expresses the competition’s new theme, “You Can Create Tomorrow.” Contestants will compete in two different categories: high school senior or high school graduate/adult.

For more information, visit this website.

See how winning past contests has impacted the lives of these students:

Popularity: 8%

Kristen Engebretsen

Our patchwork approach to providing arts education has gotta stop!

I recently read an article about a school that won a $25,000 contest by HGTV to redesign their arts room, and it actually left me upset. Why, you ask?

The short answer? I’m tired of the band-aid approach. The stop gap measures.

It’s the same reason I had to stop watching Oprah’s Favorite Things and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. For every deserving person that is honored on these shows, I know someone who is just as needy and just as deserving.

As I watched the following video about makeovers, I couldn’t help but wonder if that money could be put to better use:

What would I do with $25,000? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 11%

Jessica Wilt

As an arts administrator, I’m constantly bombarded with information coming from all directions every minute of every day.

With endless emails, text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds, I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed.

Having the ”let’s get organized!” attitude that a New Year brings, I thought it might be nice to highlight some of the good work our colleagues are doing in the field with a condensed resource guide.

Which makes me wonder: Has anyone designed an app for this yet?

Arts Education Listservs: Two of my favorites are Kristen Engrebretson’s Arts Education Roundup from Americans for the Arts (an exclusive benefit of membership – join here or ask to be added to the arts education listserv if you are a member), and Arts Education Partnership’s ArtsEd Digest. The Center for Arts Education, Education Week, and Public Education Network’s weekly NewsBlast are also great sources of information.

Blogs:  It seems everyone is writing a blog these days! Who should we be reading? Americans for the Arts’ ARTSBlog and Artsjournal.com are terrific resources. Richard Kessler’s Dewey21C and Art Education 2.0 are good ones too. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17%

Tim Mikulski

I hate that I have to write this sentence yet again, but I don’t think I can start this entry without stating the very obvious point…

Arts education continues to face budget battles in school districts across the country due to the sagging economy, failing revenue models, and just plain ignorance to the value of music, visual art, dance, and theater to students.

In a recent post, I discussed the use of hyperlocal journalism sites like Patch.com and local blogs to get the word out about your local programs, but just as valuable can be a good old-fashioned protest, utilizing the talent of the students to get the attention of those types of websites, as well as your friends in the local news media.

Here is a great example of a local news report in Ohio:

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14%

Rob Schultz

As the population of the United States matures in the 21st Century, data shows that there are as many people over age 65 as are under age 20.

To respond to this demographic shift, the Mesa Arts Center initiated an important pilot program to reach an underserved population of seniors, and early results are very promising!

The center enlisted the services of two marvelous local teaching artists, Tessa Windt (fibers), and Elizabeth Johnson (dance), to work directly with seniors at three Mesa facilities as part of the Creative Aging Program. The goal of the program is simple: uplift individual creative expression in older adults through movement, story, dance, and engagement in art making.

We’re excited that we’ve not only met our goal, but also impacted this special population in meaningful ways and we’re ready to make this program a permanent part of our services to the community.

Beginning with a curriculum map, staff and the artists developed program outcomes, a learning plan, and assessment evidence for the eight-week project. Elizabeth Johnson worked with a group of seniors at an independent-living facility. She quickly found their level of engagement to be unexpectedly high, with people practicing their movements between workshop sessions, and many seniors insisting that they teach Elizabeth about the music and dance of “their” era.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 15%

Deb Vaughn

While facilitating a panel recently, the need for one-on-one attention to help students achieve their personal goals came up.

This got me thinking about IEP’s (Individualized Education Programs). An IEP is developed to meet the unique educational needs of an individual student who may have a disability.

Here’s my thought: Don’t we all need an IEP?

I don’t mean to downplay the critical importance of IEP’s for students with disabilities (in fact, IEP’s are mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act), but to acknowledge that what works for one student, regardless of their disability status, may not work for the next.

We all have unique educational needs.

As an adult, I fill out a yearly self-evaluation, detailing my goals for the next year and my plan to achieve them. I work closely with my supervisor to make sure I include her feedback, but my self-knowledge is the driving factor in developing the plan. Together, we create an IEP for my professional development. At the end of the year, I identify areas that need continued improvement and go forward from there.

Isn’t this the kind of reflective goal-setting that encourages students to take responsibility for their education? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17%

Brian D. Cohen

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics).

The educational model of learning by doing is nowhere better exemplified than in arts education. Teachers in every discipline increasingly recognize the value of not only what students know, but what they do with what they know.

Educators are talking a lot about assessment these days, but education is too complex an enterprise to measure in one dimension. Measurement in education is too often instantaneous and linear; a momentary capture of what we already know we’re looking for. At one moment, a student shows that he or she knows a certain amount about one thing, and then the class moves on.

Say you’re learning about cell division.

Your class takes a week to study it, at the end of which you have a test. You get 36 of 50 right and you get a C – and you may never learn why you got 14 wrong or how to get them all right. And, by the way, you learn that you’re bad at science (which nobody told you involves observation and experimentation – just like art).  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 15%

Tim Mikulski

Trying to garner the attention of local media for something happening in the arts can be a daunting task — particularly if you live in a major media market with only a few newspapers, a handful of TV stations, and one or two radio stations interested in community affairs.

It’s even harder to find out how your local school board voted on your district’s arts education budget or how your state legislative candidates feel about funding for the arts.

All of that is beginning to change thanks to the world of local blogs and websites that are now becoming what used to be the areas covered by a community newspaper, but with easier access and greater availability to everyone.

Local blog sites are everywhere and should be leveraged for all of the above, particularly the “ist” blogs, as they provide a ton of city/regional coverage for the arts, as well as local government actions, etc.

Large cities like Washington, DC also have neighborhood blogs that serve a smaller niche like Prince of Petworth and Penn Quarter Living.

But, there are two websites (although not quite national yet) that often fill up my inbox when it comes to my numerous Google News Alerts for a variety of arts and arts education news –  Patch.com and Examiner.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 15%

Stephanie Riven

Perhaps you have been following David Brooks’ series of op-eds in The New York Times. He asked people over 70 to send him “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well.

No need to wait until we turn 70 to reflect on these “life lessons” and devise our own, especially as we approach the time for New Year’s resolutions.

Formulating lessons are important for all of us who work in the arts, whether as a performer, an administrator, an advocate, or an educator. These lessons are especially important because of the nature of our field — low wages, long hours, competition for jobs, among other obvious challenges.

What can we learn from Brooks and those who submitted “Life Reports?”

Divide your life into chapters: Brooks talks about “the happiest of his correspondents being those that divided time into (somewhat artificial) phases.” He describes these people as those who could see time as “something divisible into chunks” and they could more easily stop and self-appraise. This approach, he says, “gave them more control over their lives.” Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17%

On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the final budget agreement for FY 2012, which includes $146.255 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

On Saturday morning, the same bill passed the U.S. Senate and moves to the desk of President Obama for his signature.

The $146,255 million appropriation is identical to President Obama’s proposed budget, a cut of nearly $9 million from FY 2011, and is a compromise between the House of Representatives number of $135 million and the Senate number of $155 million as previously considered by their respective subcommittees.

Also included in this bill is $24.596 million in funding for the Arts in Education programs at the U.S. Department of Education, which had been zeroed-out in a previous proposal in the House.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 19%

Mary-Helen Rossi

Anyone with their eyes open today can’t help but wonder if those “gloom and doomers” might at least be partly right — should we be worried for our organizations’ survival?

And if so, with many arts organizations closing their doors, what we do to keep ours open?

CREATIVE PRAGMATISM

For decades now, arts programs have gotten funded based on their case studies (we all have terrific stories, don’t we?) and assertions as to the benefits of the arts. And why not? Those benefits are real, and incredibly valuable. But case studies and avowals aren’t exactly tangible and they just aren’t cutting it any more.

TIME FOR A CHANGE?

Let’s face it — human beings do not like to change, but I’m not willing to bet I’ll be okay if I don’t, are you?

Well then, how can we change — what’s the direction to head in? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 16%