We thought we’d celebrate the start of Arts Education Month (also known as Youth Art Month, Music in Our Schools Month, and Theatre in Our Schools Month) by bringing back our “Raisin Brahms” public service announcement from our last “The Arts. Ask for More.” campaign for an encore performance:
(Brahms Breakfast :30 from Americans for the Arts on Vimeo.)
How will you celebrate the month? Tell us in the comments below!
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Kristy Callaway
The 84th year of the Academy Awards has been an awesome year for the Oscars! There were representatives and entries from almost every continent and profession.
In the many acceptance speeches, appreciation and awe poured from the mouths of the Oscar recipients in English, French—and occasional profanity. Although they were gracefully cut off by fade away music, recipients (aka winners) were given the opportunity to extend their “thank you’s” off-stage while other nominees were recognized.
And who did they thank?
They thanked critical thinkers and problem solvers, communicators, collaborators, creators, and innovators…Actually, who did they not thank?
French connection: The Artist took Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role, Costume Design, Directing, and Music Original Score. The recipients stumbled through English and soon slipped into hyper-fluent French to thank producers, art directors, and crews for lighting, animation, sound, casting, etc.
Where are these expert talents cultivated? And how do they reach a level of super proficiency, as Malcolm Gladwell describes in Blink?
One of the goals of arts education is to produce the next generation of articulate, scholarly entrepreneurs who dare to have a vision and see it through. And only through practice, internship, shadowing, and real-world experience does one reach proficiency. Read the rest of this entry »
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Advocates rallied outside of the LAUSD board meeting.
Many of you have seen the headlines about the proposed total elimination of the elementary arts program in our country’s second largest school district—Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). And many of you probably saw the star-studded headlines about the postponement of that decision during the February 14 school board meeting.
Well, here is the rest of that story that you might not know…
At the meeting, all seven board members and Superintendent John Deasy expressed their commitment to LAUSD’s nationally recognized arts education program. The postponement allows advocates and district leaders to develop alternative strategies in the face of the district’s $550 million budget shortfall.
Arts for LA, the regional arts and arts education advocacy group for Los Angeles County, is leading the campaign to oppose the elimination, and has mobilized over 2,400 stakeholders to voice support for arts education to the LAUSD School Board.
Arts education was not alone on the chopping block. Several other essential programs, including adult and early childhood education, were also slated for elimination under one of three potential budget scenarios for 2012/2013. Read the rest of this entry »
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Ron Jones
Americans for the Arts now has excellent webinars on understanding the roles of seven different constituencies that influence arts education policy: federal, state-level, school boards, superintendents, business partnerships, principals, and parents.
Perhaps I suffer from a perspective biased because of my own professional experience, but there is one glaring absence from the series: higher education.
One reason why higher education has been overlooked is that academics, as well as the general public, tend to think that the mission—the only mission—of our colleges and universities is to train artists; to prepare college students for careers as artists, teachers, and scholars. While this is an obvious and honorable mission for arts education at the collegiate level, we are missing a real opportunity if we do not subscribe another major role to our colleges and universities: the development of future participants in the arts.
Post-Secondary arts education has an obligation to re-think how it functions and what its obligations are to the academy’s dream. Many, if not most, higher education institutions train arts majors. Most, if we are convinced by our own self-assessment, do a great job of that. But, is that all higher education in the arts can and should be doing? Can we not make a greater contribution to society than just focusing on careers?
We must have audiences. We must have donors. We must have supportive civic and corporate leaders. Therefore, we must give equal—if not priority—attention to the challenge of audience creation, development, and retention on the college and university campus. Read the rest of this entry »
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I judged a poetry slam this weekend—Louder Than A Bomb–Tulsa!
It’s amazing to hear young people sharing about their lives and ideas through poetry. This was the second year for the event. The excitement and enthusiasm expressed by these students was palpable:
Listening to their poetry really made me start thinking anew about just how important the arts are to shaping young minds—helping build self-confidence, fostering creativity, and excelling in school. We as artists, art professionals, and art educators are very often a major factor in a student’s success.
Ten states, including Oklahoma, recently received a reprieve from complying with certain aspects of No Child Left Behind. It seems like we keep lowering our standards rather than lifting up our youth to meet and exceed the challenges put before them.
How are we going to have a capable workforce replete with skills for the 21st century if we keep lowering our requirements for graduation? Companies are spending millions of dollars every year providing remedial training. Universities are spending millions of dollars every year on remedial classes.
We cannot solve our current economic woes by burying our heads in the sand and hoping by some miracle that our youth will figure it out and be successful when we haven’t provided the proper foundation or the means to foster success. Read the rest of this entry »
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Kristen Engebretsen
“In 1971, Marvin Gaye captured and commented on the spiritual and cultural chaos of the nation with his album, What’s Going On. It’s been 40 years. What’s changed? What’s Going On…Now? You Tell Us.”
That quote is from the homepage of the What’s Going On…Now website, the product of a collaboration between the Kennedy Center, Digital Youth Network, Universal Music Enterprises, and Grammy Award winning musician John Legend.
Together, they hope that Marvin Gaye’s still relevant question will spark youth to use digital media as a lens to understand the world around them and empower those youth to change the world around them.
Here are the details of the initiative:
Through the lens of Marvin Gaye’s landmark album, students are asked to create an original media piece that shares their vision of What’s Going On…Now. They can then upload their piece to either YouTube or Flickr, and are entered into a contest to win a trip for two to attend a tribute concert featuring John Legend, the National Symphony Orchestra, and Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings at the Kennedy Center in May.
To launch this new initiative, the Kennedy Center held a press conference on January 31 that included a live performance by John Legend. Besides the press in attendance, there were also students from Duke Ellington School for the Arts, who were rehearsing for a performance later that night. Legend surprised them by spontaneously inviting them up on stage to perform with him. Here is their incredible and moving performance:
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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 »
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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 21st 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:
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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 »
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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 »
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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:
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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 »
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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 »
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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:
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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 »
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Alec Baldwin and Nigel Lythgoe talk about the state of the arts in America at Arts Advocacy Day 2012. The acclaimed actor and famed producer discuss arts education and what inspires them.
