ARTSblog

Katherine Damkohler

When visiting a foreign country, you are expected to know at least a few choice phrases, if not speak the language. In addition, you need to know local customs, pastimes, and the economic/social contexts of its citizens.

In much the same way, a school’s arts partner must also be aware of the academic environment they enter, and understand the perspective of the faculty and students. Of course, as arts partners we have something unique and important to contribute to the school (that’s why we’re there, after all), but speaking the language and understanding the challenges of the school make the connections so much richer.

We all talk about the power of the arts to engage students. Engaging students is vitally important, but it cannot be empty engagement—they must be engaged in a way that inspires learning and connections across the curriculum. By speaking the language of the school you help the school’s mission and your organization’s mission simultaneously.

Currently, and in the near future, the dialog within schools focuses upon the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The shifts that are required to implement the CCSS are vital for arts partners to understand. Read the rest of this entry »

Kristen Engebretsen

I hope that everyone has enjoyed reading the various thoughts and stories from leaders across the country during our bi-annual Blog Salon (come back in September for our second one).

During the Salon, we heard examples of how folks are measuring quality, in terms of the effectiveness of their partnerships and their levels of student engagement:

• Talia’s story of training school leaders to look at student work using the Qualities of Quality.
• The results Merryl shared from her program, DREAM.
• Lynne’s explanation of partnerships that have (and have not) worked for her national association.

We also heard some calls to action, by authors who wanted to push the field forward:

• Seth’s ideas for shaking up education.
• Jane’s call to let go of the notion that “models” from the “pockets of excellence” in the field will emerge and conveniently help us “scale up” and solve all of our problems.
• Joyce’s simple reminder that creativity is the answer to this search for quality.

Thanks for following our salon on quality, engagement, and partnerships.

After reading all of these posts, have you decided on your own equation for quality in your community? I’d love to hear your final reflections in the comments section.

To view the salon in its entirety, please use this link: http://bit.ly/y9d2JV.

Joanne Riley

The new pARTnership Movement has really resonated with the Cultural Alliance of York County (PA). Though we solicit individuals now, we started, and mostly still are, a corporate campaign for the arts.

Annually we raise $1.2 million dollars. More than 300 companies make that happen by contributing to a campaign for arts, history, and culture. That’s an incredible number considering we are a town of 44,000 and a county of about 400,000.

The founders of the Cultural Alliance were the heads of large corporations here. They supported the concept of a United Arts Fund and invested in it. We had success our first year (2000) and have continued to meet or exceed goal.

The message that we clearly stated, from the beginning, is that the arts are good for business. Though our message was not so clearly articulated as the pARTnership Movement has been, the fact is we use those eight reasons to establish the arts’ genuine ability to change our community.  Read the rest of this entry »

Sahar Javedani

As some of you may know, after seven years of working in New York City in arts education, I have recently moved to Philadelphia and am excited to join the creative workforce there!

Just after moving to Philly, I was encouraged by fellow arts ed colleagues to reach out to Varissa McMickens, director of ArtsRising, and she welcomed me with open arms, sharing valuable resources and orienting me on the current arts education scene and its’ wonderfully diverse programs.

On February 28, I had the great pleasure of joining 50 other representatives of Philadelphia arts & culture organizations in “Growing Stronger Together : Center City Student Forum & Conversation.”

This forum was organized by partner organizations: Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, ArtsRising, and PhillyRising.

Here’s a great description of the event from the ArtsRising website:

“Growing Stronger Together, a focus group with approximately 20 local high school students and representatives from the organizations mentioned above, was really about hearing the students’ voices. Read the rest of this entry »

Joyce Bonomini

As a practitioner, I have often taken quality, engagement and partnership for granted: they are a given. How could you live without any of them?

In fact, none of these factors exist without the other. Think about it. Think about how life would be…

I know that I am expanding the definitions in my head. I am not just talking about partnership of organizations here but individuals; such as teacher to student or the partnership a person has with their instrument, writing pen, script, or experiment.

I am talking about life with or without connection of self to others. I am not sure how quality of any level can exist without connection.

WOW, what an “AHA!” moment I just had because that is what we ask hundreds of thousands of students to do every day in the classrooms across this country.

Can we stop asking WHY students are dropping out?

I mean, don’t we know why they are BORED, feel unengaged, and often have no connection to either their instructor or anyone else. Read the rest of this entry »

Victoria Plettner-Saunders

I’m often confused about the difference between collaboration and partnership.

We seem to use the terms interchangeably when in fact they are different. This Blog Salon is, in part, about partnerships and engagement. But are we all talking about the same thing?

I once had it explained to me that there is a continuum of engagement that includes, in order: affiliations, collaborations, partnerships, and mergers.

Moving from left to right each becomes more involved depending on the risk and resource contribution each party makes. So an affiliation requires the least amounts of risk and resources and a merger requires the most.

In a collaboration, each operates independently and has complete control over the individual resources they bring to the table. In a partnership, however, there is more of a co-mingling of resources and a separate structure is developed to oversee or manage the engagement. Sometimes what starts out as a collaboration becomes a partnership. (For more in-depth information see Collaboration: What Makes it Work by Mattessich, Murray‐Close, & Monsey, 2001.)

I think this distinction is an important one in response to Lynne’s post. Read the rest of this entry »

Merryl Goldberg

In considering quality, engagement, and partnerships, I’m really thrilled to be writing about DREAM and TELL!

Developing Reading Education through Arts Methods (DREAM) is a four-year arts integration program funded through the United States Department of Education Office of Innovation and Improvement: Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination Grant Program.

Theater for English Language Learners (TELL!) is a multi-year project with funding this year from the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts in Education category.

Both programs are partnership programs involving school districts, a university, and professional artists. In this post and my next one, I will describe each of these projects. This one introduces DREAM.

“Some schools don’t have what kids need to enjoy school,” said Jordan Zavala, 9. “I used to have a hard time reading, but since I’ve been in Mr. DeLeon’s class I’ve done better because we act out what we learn. It’s really been fun.” (San Diego Union Tribune 2/10/12)

The DREAM program is a partnership of the San Diego County Office of Education via the North County Professional Development Federation, and Center ARTES at California State University San Marcos.

The program’s goal is to train third and fourth grade teachers to use visual arts and theater activities to improve students’ reading and language arts skills. Read the rest of this entry »

Lynne Kingsley

On the surface everyone loves partnerships.

“I want to partner with this organization; I want to partner with that organization; I just love partnerships.”

But do we? Partnerships come in all shapes and sizes, some fit; some don’t. Just because two or more organizations seem to have similar interests does not mean a partnership is the right match.

At the American Alliance for Theatre & Education (AATE), the opportunity to partner comes quite often though we’ve become more and more discerning over the years.

We have some solid state partners. The Illinois Theatre Association (ITA), for example has partnered with AATE for the past five years in hosting the Theatre In Our Schools mini-conference in Illinois.

We have some sound national partners. We continually partner with the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) and Theatre for Young Audiences USA (TYA/USA) on national issues facing theatre education such as the upcoming revision of the National Arts Standards and Dramatic Change: an anti-bullying initiative, respectively. These partnerships just “fit”.

We’ve also had partnerships that were mismatched. Last year we attempted to partner with a school video content producer along the lines of YouTube. It seemed all the pieces were in place and a partnership was born. Then, something happened. It was unclear to me why it fell apart and the mutual interest seemed to dissipate. It made me wonder, what was the missing piece? Read the rest of this entry »

Students take part in Mesa Arts Center's Culture Connect program.

I spent the past 10 years touring the state of Arizona working for the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

Along the way, I saw quality arts education partnerships in action from county attorney’s offices collaborating with urban elementary schools to create murals with an anti-drug message, to rural school districts working in tandem with presenting organizations to provide live theatre to students.

I met partners who brought a unique contribution to the table and partners vested in ensuring their programs were of quality.

However, I also encountered estranged, forced, and tired partnerships that were no longer contributing quality experiences to students.

I’ve also made a career change. In my new role as the education director of outreach for the Mesa Arts Center, I’m charged with providing authentic arts experiences and finding unique, quality partners to deepen the impact of arts education in our community.

While I had numerous examples in the field to draw from, like many colleagues, I found there was never one program I could model from or one solution to “how do we make this work?” Each community, art center, school, teacher, and artist had their own unique contribution and impact to make. Read the rest of this entry »

Joyce Bonomini

Arts education is my passion and I believe a solution to most problems in the world.

I could stop there, but I won’t.

I am fortunate to lead a team of arts educators and administrators that are committed to a vision and definition of arts education that insists on quality, engagement, and partnerships to sustain.

We believe:

1. Arts and arts education are essential to human development.
2. Arts are vital to the life of the community.
3. The measure of our culture lives in the art we value and pass on to our children.
4. Art is personal; art changes lives.

Through professional leadership, adherence to standards of excellence, responsiveness to our constituents, and uncompromising dedication to principals of inclusion, The Hoffman Institute provides a dynamic resource to all segments of the community for life-long experience, exploration, discovery, and mastery of the performing arts.

Our educational philosophy follows that vision as we believe that the performing arts are integral to human development and essential to the quality of life of a community. Furthermore, quality programming engages the community as a whole in an ongoing dialogue that strengthens the individual, our organization, and the community at large. Read the rest of this entry »

Talia Gibas

Depending on where you sit, a host of different words may have popped into your head to fill the blank in the title of this post—ranging from “exciting” to “difficult” to plain “weird.”

Based on my experience working with school district leaders in Los Angeles County, I fill in the blank with a simple “engaging.” If allowed to break my own rule and add a few more words, I would say, “necessary if we are serious about engaging new partners.”

During the 2009–10 school year, I worked on Arts for All’s Leadership Fellows Program, a professional development series meant to help school district leaders (namely superintendents, assistant superintendents, and district-level visual and performing arts leads) better advance arts education across their school districts.

Over the course of a school year, leadership teams from five districts in Los Angeles County met monthly to explore topics related to arts education. At the end, when asked to reflect on the elements of the series they found particularly useful, they kept bringing up a particular topic: quality.

Specifically, they enjoyed the session that focused on the four lenses of quality arts education as defined in Harvard Project Zero’s The Qualities of Quality. That session also delved into using the lenses as a tool to observe, assess, and discuss what was happening within their classrooms. Read the rest of this entry »

John Bryan

#1 Richmond has an enviable business community as evidenced by its being one of only 11 cities to be headquarters to more than five Fortune 500 companies and one of only 12 cities to have a Federal Reserve Bank.

#2 Richmond’s arts/culture community is likewise enviable as evidenced by its emergence from the recession with all of its major arts and culture organizations thriving: symphony, opera, ballet, theatre, art museum, science museum, history museum, children’s museum, botanical garden, and many dozens more.

#3 Richmond has a slew of enviable national creative superlatives such as being home to the #1 marketing company (Martin Agency – think Geico gekko), #1 public art university (VCU), #1 university advertising program (VCU Adcenter), and forthcoming building designed by the #1 architect (Steven Holl).

Those three sentences have resulted in a three-year Greater Richmond Chamber-led initiative entitled i.e.* – a grand partnership that spotlights and energizes creativity and innovation for three purposes: enable the business community to leverage the creative community in accomplishing real business objectives; provide expanded audiences for the creative community; and foster new relationships and partnerships.

Richmond’s local arts agency—CultureWorks—is one of the active partners with the Chamber’s i.e.* initiative and three current projects demonstrate the partnership’s value. Read the rest of this entry »

Reina Chadwick

Business leaders are faced with many decisions. They are responsible for a staff, various departments, as well as decisions that affect the company and ultimately their own livelihoods.

Within these decisions lies a leader’s ability to think outside of the box. Business leaders around the country are being forced to think differently as a way to cope with the ever-changing economic landscape. While this is not a brand new phenomenon, we are seeing an increase in those business leaders who are looking to the arts to build their competitive advantage.

Don’t believe me? Look right in our [Miami] backyard for a few examples of businesses that have partnered with arts organizations: Kaufman Rossin & Co., TD Bank, American Express, and Northern Trust Bank. These companies recognize that the arts play a major role in the community and that people in the community see their name, thus creating brand awareness.

But businesses are in it for more than just brand recognition. Companies that place high value on the arts in their company culture tend to have less turnaround and have more productive employees. These are just some of the incentives to working with the arts.

The InterContinental Miami is a prime example of a successful business-arts partnership as they recently initiated an arts program right in their hotel lobby.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wayne Andrews

Where we live is important to each of us. It is a key part of our identity. It’s a source of pride, even if our hometown is the punch line to a joke.

Is it really the good schools, parks, and access to shopping centers that make us live where we live? Many people find a fulfilling sense of community in smaller towns and rural regions that do not have all the advantages of larger communities.

Maybe it is not the measurable elements that give a place a sense of community but rather those intangible qualities that create the feeling. Could it be that working with your neighbors to build a park is more important to the sense of community than the actual park? The arts have always been one of the focal points around that help to build a sense of community.

Town festivals, cultural events, and celebrations are often the most visible signs of a community working together. Each pumpkin festival, summer concert series on the town square, or art sale pulls together diverse elements of the community.

An example of this can be seen in Oxford, MS, which has worked to define itself as an arts community. Numerous programs have been launched in partnership between various segments of the community.

Last year working with local business owners, artists, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, a monthly art crawl was launched to highlight the visual artists in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Robb Hankins

In downtown Canton, OH, through an ongoing partnership with the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce (and its Special Improvement District), we’ve spent the last five years creating the Canton Arts District.

The results have been totally amazing and changed everyone’s thinking about this downtown coming back.

In 2005, we started with three strategies: live music, galleries/artist studios, and public art. We had only one art gallery—-and not a single artist studio.

Today, the Canton Arts District has 26 galleries and studios.

The first art studios opened when local developer Mike King bought an old building down on 4^th Street NW, deciding to convert it into Studio 5. It would have five artist studios downstairs and five independent artist apartments upstairs. ArtsinStark partnered with King on spreading the word and providing a small rent subsidy for the first year.

By the time Studio 5 opened every unit was rented out and there were eight artists on the list hoping for another building. Here’s a video of how Studio 5 looked when it was just opening

As the Canton Arts District began to take shape we needed a way to let people know, so we decided to host a monthly party—-First Friday. Read the rest of this entry »