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:

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.

This reality of consumer behavior drives innovation which can come full circle to benefit the arts community by building a market for custom inks, more sophisticated silkscreening technology, production of art tiles, more advanced photography printing techniques, and a host of other applied technologies. The California Gift Show paid tribute to the contribution of artists by presenting a working artists’ studio with four painters demonstrating their techniques at the entrance to the exhibition.

An overview of the art shows provided a helpful reminder that commercial assignments are often the foundations from which fine artists build.

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec worked together with printers to create hundreds of advertising posters for bicycles, equestrian events, and cabarets. Norman Rockwell began working as a commercial illustrator for magazines as a teenager. The oil paintings he created for the publishers’ final cover choices are now coveted by art collectors.

A 1919 Rockwell cover for Collier’s was recently featured on Antiques Roadshow with a value estimate of $500,000. An iconic 1930 Rockwell cover design for the Saturday Evening Post was featured at the Los Angeles Fine Art Show with an asking price over $3 million.

Comparing and contrasting the art shows and the commercial shows is a good way to understand how art and commerce can complement one another and enhance the quality of results.

Several standouts at the art shows included works for which the artists created their own paper or customized the chemical additives in art glass to produce a distinctive image. Custom paper production processes such as bamboo paper and gingko paper have been adapted by the commercial world for upscale consumer products.

The sportswear show provided several good examples of how well trained artists and designers can innovate with texture to produce both superior products and more creative art.

This creative convergence also underscored the importance of arts education in helping America to maximize the benefits of its creative economy.

Attorney Tom Holliday participated in a panel of art collectors at the Los Angeles Art Show and presented his experience from the perspective of a trustee at a leading engineering school, Clarkson University.

Holliday confirmed that the creative thinking processes from learning about art and music are valuable in the education of talented engineers and gives them better creativity to think about engineering and technology projects.

This creative convergence shows one more way that an investment in arts education is an investment in America’s future.

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.

The concept of STEAM (not just STEM) is taking hold as more parents and educators are learning the importance of nurturing both sides of the brain, and creating the new thinking skills our young people will need in the new economy. Art, in all it forms, does this. Hence, the STEAM camps with the emphasis on the arts and art related businesses such as digital media, biomedicine, biotechnology, energy, and clean technologies.

Concordia, in particular, focused last summer on the physical and chemical properties of water and the local environment. They also gave kids the “hands-on” experience of designing their “own personal crayon color (and) creating the perfect formula for bubble gum.” They made soda and homemade toothpaste and explored the human body including “skeletal structure, DNA function, blood typing, and…dissection of a fetal pig.”

“Our Lutheran schools in this region are working on transforming their classrooms to reflect a 21st century design,” says Mark Muehl, speaking for the Indiana effort. “What we have learned is that there is a lot of growth that must occur with our teachers to allow for project-based learning to be more of the norm as opposed to the exception” and so the STEAM camp idea becomes the entry point.

Ed Abeyta of UCSD agrees: “We need STEAM-based education. Our global competitive edge requires educating our youth in a manner whose training combines the convergent thinking skills found in STEM education divergent thinking skills (and) creative problem solving real problems in the world.”

The Discovery Academy adopted STEAM as an inherent part of the school’s mission “to provide a rigorous education that develops the whole child as a scholar, athlete, artist, and democratic member of society.”

They plan a curriculum patterned on the Fab Lab, a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the San Diego-based nonprofit Heads on Fire. The curriculum is expected to offer courses on: Digital Arts and New media, Design & Digital Fabrication, Electronics & Engineering, Creative Computing & Programming, and Alternative Energy and Renewable Fuels.

In Plano, TX, where Texas Instruments (TI) makes its home, middle schools in the area will get $5 million from the company to help launch and develop the district’s first STEAM Academy; but, also a new innovative high school as recommended by the Academy Visioning Committee meeting in April this year.

Associate Superintendent Cathy Galloway of the Plano Schools district says:

“Our academy visioning committee…opted to ensure that arts education be included as an integral part of the learning context. In addition to problem/project based learning being the instructional method used in the academy, the problems themselves will revolve around the context of STEAM to provide broader experiences than a traditional STEM focus.”

The Plano district serves the residents of approximately 100 square miles in southwest Collin County. This area includes 66 square miles in the City of Plano, with the balance including northern portions of the cities of Dallas and Richardson and parts of the cities of Allen, Carrollton, Garland, Lucas, Murphy, Parker, and Wylie.

And in Massachusetts, there is a workshop called ARTBOTICS, funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, involving art, computer science, and robotics.

They offer an eight-week summer program piloted by a group of Lowell High School graduates and University of Massachusetts students. They have also launched a week-long summer camp for middle school students, and “day-long workshops for educators of art, science, technology, engineering, and math subjects.”

This could be the beginning of meaningful efforts to bring the arts and sciences together once again.

*This post was originally published by Huff Post Arts and is republished here with permission from the author.

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:

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?

• Buy instruments for a school that doesn’t have ANY.
• Pay part of an itinerant teacher’s salary to visit MANY schools throughout the year.
• Support a community program that serves thousands of students a year.
• Award it to a nonprofit that could leverage it by raising matching funds.
• Start an endowment in a school district for arts education, helping ensure that ALL of the students in that district received arts instruction EVERY year.

Unfortunately, these makeovers seem to be symptoms of a larger problem around the country.

Here is another example:

An article from The San Francisco Examiner outlines how the schools there rely on a patchwork of grant programs and donations to provide arts education. The article quoted my former boss, Mark Slavkin, VP for Education at the Music Center: Performing Arts Center of LA County.

“The northeastern states are spending twice as much on education as California,” Slavkin said. “What these states take for granted, like dedicated art and music teachers, is something of a luxury in California.” Although the community often steps up to prevent art and music from getting cut, Slavkin said that approach was no longer sustainable. “It’s a pretty noble gesture, but it can be self-defeating in the long run if it’s not coupled with advocacy,” he said. “The arts can sometimes dig ourselves a hole by saying, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have a bake sale, we’ll raise money.’”

I couldn’t agree more, Mark.

It feels like I read a new article about this type of funding for arts education every day. This steady stream of articles points to a growing trend that makes me uncomfortable.

I just keep coming back to the major problem with this patchwork approach: EQUITY. I can’t help but think about the students at schools that don’t get magical makeovers or win contests.

What do they get? How is it okay for only the winners of popularity contests to get the type of education that all students deserve?

I know that districts are caught between a rock and a hard place. It is tempting to adopt the mentality that something is better than nothing. And I generally subscribe to the notion that organizations need a healthy mix of earned income, private donations, and government funding. But shouldn’t it be the responsibility of the district (through federal, state, and local taxes) to provide critical supplies and instruction? Then, the makeovers, micro-philanthropists, online votes, and contests could all just be icing on the cake.

So how do we move away from this patchwork approach? Here are my three suggestions:

1)      Investment in arts specialists that serve ALL students in a district.

2)      Training for elementary teachers that equips them to teach some basic arts lessons.

3)      Coordinated and strategic efforts in communities, much like Arts for All in LA, Big Thought in Dallas, and the Right Brain Initiative in Portland.

What would you suggest?

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.

Websites: The buzz this year will continue to be about Common Core Standards. I recently attended a two-day professional development training about “Mapping to the Core” with curriculum expert Heidi Hayes Jacobs and her organization’s website, Curriculum 21, is a fantastic resource for education and technology including a free upcoming “Mapping to the Core” webinar series.

Others of note: The Association of Teaching Artists, TED Talks, The J. F. Kennedy Center’s ArtsEdge, and Quadrant Arts Education Research.

I also recently came across two “best of” articles that relate to the arts. Chris Unitt’s blog post and Hannah Rudman’s article highlight some of the great ways artists are using technology.

Anyone interested in a free eBook about arts assessment? Visual art teacher Jessica Balsley offers The Pocket Guide to Simple Art Assessments with a fully downloadable, 65-page version for $9. 

People: Here are some great resources in the form of arts education superheroes and their work–Eric Booth’s Everyday Arts, Russell Granet’s Arts Education Resource, Sir Ken Robinson (and his inspiring TED Talk), and Diane Ravitch’s book: The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Finally, I present must-attend events for the new year.

2012 Conferences/Events:

NYC Arts In Education Roundtable’s Face to Face Conference, February 22-23

AEP National Forum, April 12-13

National Arts Advocacy Day, Washington DC, April 16-17

Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, San Antonio, TX, June 8-10

National Guild For Community Arts Education, Dallas, TX, Nov 14-17

Feel free to add your own favorite resources in the comments below!

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:

This video goes to show you that it doesn’t have to be a flashy protest with chanting and a thousand people outside the superintendent’s office to make an impact.

I’ve posted videos like this that I’ve stumbled across during my news searches, but I’d love to see and post more on ARTSblog so that our site can be used as resource to help arts advocates make their case from Alabama to Wyoming (and beyond).

Please share links to your own videos in the comments below and I’ll post more of these when I can.

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. 

Almost all would invariably begin the workshop session seated and sedentary, but ended up standing and dancing and anxious for more at workshop’s end. Elizabeth noted that those who arrived for the session in ill health would be resistant to physical movement, but those who soldiered on felt markedly better because of their engagement.

She also reflected on dancers from Arizona State University who served as project assistants. They came in somewhat self-conscious and unsure of their own abilities — until they worked with the seniors who told them how beautifully they danced and how talented they really were. The students slowly absorbed this feedback, and Elizabeth could see how their own dancing changed and matured by the project’s conclusion.

Tessa Windt worked with seniors afflicted with dementia, whose caregivers utilized an adult day care facility just a few blocks from the Mesa Arts Center. They worked on their own individual sculptures under Tessa’s close supervision and encouragement, and benefited from regular discussions led by Tessa and also feedback from others in the group.

They used multi-colored fabrics to create layers of texture and depth and meaning. They applauded their neighbor’s success and progress. They gave advice freely.

Interestingly, many participants related their sculptures to the houses they grew up in and even recited their house numbers and street addresses, memories long forgotten until their engagement helped resurrect them.

The executive director of the day care center was thrilled with how, as he put it, “These folks perked up and become much more aware of their surroundings and interacted with others, and stayed that way long after the workshop was over.”

The Creative Aging Program is small, only a very slight percentage of our center’s comprehensive menu of arts programs and activities. Yet, little else we offer has an impact more powerful, more personal, and more poignant.

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?

But our over-taxed education system may be eliminating the very diversity that we pride ourselves on. Well-intentioned efforts to provide equitable levels of education for every student (clearly a worthy and appropriate goal), instead of raising the bar to assure all students have the same high-quality level of education, may have created a very low common denominator.

What if students were asked to take a more active role in directing their own education?

What if we asked students: “What is important to you right now? What do you need to learn? How can we help you accomplish that?”

Oregon is taking a first step towards this goal. In the last legislative session, HB-2220 passed, offering schools the flexibility of more proficiency-based choices. Instead of focusing entirely on standardized tests, schools now have the option of allowing students to demonstrate their mastery of a subject in a variety of different ways. Students are invited to take responsibility for their own learning style.

What we seem to forget in our age of high-stakes testing is that there is no one right answer. We keep trying to determine whether A, B, or C is the “right” choice, but the reality is, we all have to write our own answers.

What would education look like if we really embraced diversity and started first with the individual student?

Would the additional cost of that one-on-one time pay off in the long run with more effective classroom teams? (Students with similar IEP’s could be grouped together in learning teams, or intentionally mixed with contrasting learners to help each other).

And now you’re asking: “What does this have to do with arts education?”

For starters, in my field (theatre) it isn’t just about the actors or the light board operator or the box office manager: it takes many unique individuals, each bringing their personal skills to the production. All of the arts offer multiple in-roads to a given subject, subverting “cookie-cutter curriculum” and opening paths to diverse learning styles.

Just like an IEP, the arts allow each of us to work in the medium that best suits our needs rather than forcing us into box A, B or C.  The arts allow students to explore, experiment and discover what works—to find their own learning style.

The arts require students to express their individuality, increase motivation and heighten engagement: all things we claim to value in education.

So, what’s your IEP?

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). 

A math teacher colleague created a rubric of skills and content he wanted his students to master. He made sure that these skills were essential (necessary to learn), cumulative (you needed to learn them to move on in the subject), and useful (kids could apply skills right away in context). He gave the kids the year to master them, and (because he was a math teacher) he kept a chart of when each student showed he/she could apply the skill. He approached each student and each topic in a different way.

As long as they got there, he felt – rightly – that he had done his job.

Performance in the arts involves a complex layering and interrelationship of knowledge, understanding, and interpretation. What do kids learn in an arts class? Not only the rules and language of their medium, but – importantly – to develop their own habits of mind and imagination and to acquire the discipline of continuing to work in the face of not being able to get the answers right away. And, they often learn that there is more than one way to get to an answer, and sometimes more than one answer.

What you measure is what you teach for. When we assess students in art we hope to find something we may not already know – what the student has discovered and shown us, if we are open to seeing and hearing it. Not just “is this good?” – but “what did this student intend, what has this student accomplished, how did they get there, what have they told me, what have they taught me, what have they made me feel?”

Can we teach and assess art – or science, math, history or literature – as an active and meaningful process of observation, participation, exploration ,and application?

Can we teach for and assess curiosity, determination, resolve, and imagination?

Can we help students develop a tolerance for struggle and frustration, for occasional failure, for uncertainty, for sometimes being wrong, and for trusting in their own courage, intuition, stamina and daring?

In 2012, Americans for the Arts resolves to invigorate political discourse and the nation by continuing to spotlight the importance of the arts in America. Artists, teachers, arts managers and professionals, lawmakers, administrators, and advocates are integral to this mission.

This election year, the urgency is growing to have political candidates and office holders understand how arts are vital to our communities. We ask that you make your own resolutions this year by responding to this question:

How can the arts energize the political dialogue in your community this election year?

Here are some insightful responses to get you thinking. Add yours in the comments below!

First I want the political dialogue to be in part about the arts themselves. That only happens if we ask related questions of the candidates whether in person at events or in writing or online. For example does a local, state, or federal candidate know that there are 5.7 million jobs created by nonprofit arts organizations in America? What is that candidate going to do to keep advancing that arts industry? Or does the candidate know that support for the arts is a very conservative model in the United States, where public money, federal, state, and local combined, is less than nine percent of the income of the nonprofit arts in America? That nine percent, however, stimulates an industry with $187 billion of economic impact, so what is the candidate going to do to keep that conservative job-producing model going by maintaining or advancing the small bit of leverage investment that is made with public dollars?
-Robert Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts

With redistricting, a lot is changing for state and federal representation. There will be many contested races. The arts community should be ready to talk with candidates and get them on the record with positions on the arts. Arts leaders and arts supporters should get involved personally with campaigns and bring their creativity with them to spice up campaign events, communications, and fundraisers. 
-Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Animating Democracy Co-Director, Americans for the Arts

Just ask the question: What is your stand on supporting the arts? This has created quite the conversation among our political and business groups!
-Meri Mass, Executive Director, Polk Arts Alliance

If approached the right way this could send a positive message — not a cap in hand or entitled one. I think refocusing the perspective towards arts nonprofits as small business as opposed to charities is essential. To do this efforts have to be made to give the business community and the politicians tools for the conversation. If investment (as opposed to donations) can be given a foothold using job creation and downtown, economic, community development examples — we can stay in the conversation and make progress. Small business, for-profit creative industry projects, and arts nonprofit collaborative efforts with results will make an impact with a receptive audience. Not everyone is receptive, but those who are when given examples of growth and success will begin to champion at least at a base level.
-Jim Sparrow, Executive Director, Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne

I resolve to use my personal Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels to ensure that my friends and colleagues understand how critical it is during an election year to advocate for the arts. Whether it’s tweeting at politicians or getting a dialogue started on Facebook, social media is a potent way to share the value of the arts and help politicians and government officials see that the arts create jobs, contribute significantly to the economy, and make our communities better places to live.
-Graham Dunstan, Director of Marketing & Communications, Americans for the Arts

Energize and expand greater commitments from arts advocates to participate in the political dialogue. Effectively engage ourselves and others to pay closer attention to candidates and their views. Listen, reach out, inform, and build more meaningful relationships with candidates and those already in office about the substantial economic and qualitative value of the arts. Assess the best access points for us to participate in the political dialogue; be prepared to share reliable and powerful messages, facts, and our personal stories about the arts; engage, where appropriate, in candidates and campaigns; determine who are the best candidates on issues important to us; and vote. Our voices, our votes matter.
-Sherron Long, Chair, State Arts Action Network/President, Florida Cultural Alliance

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.”

How often have we talked to students/teachers/artists who struggle with indecision about their next steps as if it is their final step? If we could only help them to see that through experimenting with one role or another they will build their skills and realize their vision. Chapters, yes. End points, no.

Beware rumination: “The most impressive people were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it, or were grateful for it.”

Can we as artists, arts educators, and administrators become “strategic self-deceivers?” Can we forgive ourselves when the performance, the class, or the board meeting doesn’t go so well? Can we go around the barriers to achieve our ambitious goals?

Lean toward risk: “Many seniors”, Brooks reports, “regret the risks that they didn’t take.”

And how relevant that is to so many organizations, boards, administrators, and artists who don’t understand that to grow we must take on the unknown. How many organizations won’t hire that next person who they know will make all the difference, take on a more ambitious script, or commit to innovation because they are risk averse?

Can we learn from these seniors before we turn 70?

In 2012, let’s pledge to reflect actively on where we are and how we will proceed, forgiving ourselves, moving ahead, and writing new chapters.

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.

This concludes the prolonged Congressional negotiations for the FY 2012 budget and prevents a government shutdown.

After the New Year, Congress will begin considering the FY 2013 budget. Join us in Washington, DC for National Arts Advocacy Day 2012 on April 16–17, 2012 to let your members of Congress know the arts are important to you and your communities!

Thank you for your support of the arts! Please help us continue this important work by becoming a free member of the Arts Action Fund.

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?

LET’S PROVE IT!

While “Prove It” has become funders’ new mantra, most arts groups are simply unprepared. How the heck do you prove those more intangible qualities that we all consider to be most important? How do you track and assess the light in a student’s eyes when he feels confident, empowered, and successful?

There are, of course, a number of evaluation software tools on the market today, but they’re incredibly tedious to learn and operate. Not only that, but they also typically evaluate generic qualities that would dumb down a good arts program, and we artists do tend to resist being dumbed down.

So here’s what we’ve been doing at Merge Education for the past few years: we’ve developed our own software. It’s available commercially now, but this post is about sharing some of the points we came up with that you can step off of to design your own evaluation — an evaluation that will help you survive.

How did we develop these points?

Because like most artists we really dislike superficiality, we worked with other educators, artists, mental health professionals, and evaluation scientists to drill down on the points that are actually the building blocks a person needs to develop in order to become more resilient and better able to learn.

As you’ll read in a moment, these points are essential to good human development, so in evaluating and assessing these, you’re not dumbing anything down.

DESIGNING YOUR EVALUATION TOOL

Where should you start? To clarify your thinking, break your questions down into three distinct areas.

First, look at the student’s relationship to herself — e.g., what is her level of her concentration and focus? Her motivation? Her consistency of effort?

Then, consider her relationship to the teacher. Does she, for example, listen well? Communicate her ideas?

Finally, take a look at how she’s developing her skills. Is she willing to try new steps? Identify correlations/relationships?

Set up a list of these and other points (we use a total of 15 for this scale), and establish a scoring mechanism for each of them on a scale of 1 to 5. For best results, provide anchor points (i.e., what each score should mean) so teachers’ answers won’t be random.

Once you’ve developed specific points to measure, you’ll have a good working observation tool. If you add a goal setting process to this you’ll be able to track each student more specifically, and your process will get even more effective and interesting.

Although our software integrates additional scales plus program management, if you do a thoughtful job with this one scale — thinking about and expanding on these points — you’ll have the data that every funder wants to see.

More importantly, you’ll have verifiable, specific, meaningful data, and when you have that kind of data not only do you have improved program oversight, you have the proof — and when you have the proof, you have survival.

It may get really tough in the next few years, but if we keep our eyes open, help each other, and do some digging in to prove it, we’ll stand a much better chance of making it.

The Storyline Project is a great example of effective and inexpensive collaboration with valuable community outcomes.

Launched in summer 2009, the project had roots in an impromptu collaborative effort from the previous year. Charlottesville Parks & Recreation came to Piedmont Council for the Arts (PCA) for help painting a school bus to transport youth to recreation centers around town. Aware of our limited capacity, we reached out to another nonprofit, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, for help.

Though similarly small, The Bridge had experience working with local artists on public art projects. With their expertise, PCA’s commitment to managing the project, and our shared enthusiasm for the possibilities, a new partnership was born.

Together, we coordinated a team of local artists and Parks & Rec summer camp students for the exciting challenge of painting what became known as the Fun Bus.

The Fun Bus project

The following year, Parks & Rec approached PCA about designing another arts project for their summer camp program. They agreed to provide campers and logistics coordination if PCA could provide artists and hands-on project oversight.

Almost simultaneously, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression came to us with the idea of designing a youth arts program for their First Amendment Monument, also called the Community Chalkboard and located on the downtown pedestrian mall in front of City Hall.

In response, we proposed that PCA and The Bridge work together for a second year of Parks & Rec programming, this time joining up with the designer of the monument to create a project that would culminate in a youth-made mural on the Community Chalkboard. We jumped into program development, with many of the details and partnership dynamics already in place.

The Storyline Project leads 30-40 summer campers, mostly upper-elementary and middle school students from low-income households, on a walking tour of our city. The students are joined by artists, designers, storytellers, historians, and scientists as they walk through parks and neighborhoods, learning about the past and imagining the future of the place we call home.

They sketch in handmade notebooks, photograph interesting things they see, and interview people they meet along the way. After three half-day sessions of exploring the city through a creative lens, they work together on a chalkboard mural that illustrates the themes of their walk. Each partner organization has a clearly defined role in bringing the project to fruition, and the students lead the way creatively.

Here’s a sample of the chalkboard mural:

Although simple in program design, Storyline’s outcomes are complex and far-reaching.

The students gain an awareness of and appreciation for creative professions, a deeper understanding of local history, and a sense of ownership in downtown neighborhoods. The areas explored are often rife with issues related to racial tensions and socioeconomic disparity, and Storyline provides an outlet for exploring and interacting in public space. The project also opens students up to new experiences.

In 2011, the Storyline route traversed trails in natural areas just a short distance from downtown. For many of the students, it was the first time they’d ever been to a river or forest. The students also learn about the creative process. They put hours into designing and creating a collaborative mural only to see it washed away by rain a few days later. They accept this fleetingness as part of the project, similar to the changes we experience in life and in our community.

The value of Storyline lies in the exchange of ideas — the collaboration itself rather than in the finished piece.

For the past three summers, Storyline has evolved and improved. As a process-oriented and collaborative project, it is inexpensive to produce, requiring an investment of little more than staff time for each partner.

Its sustainability comes in part from lessons learned in the Fun Bus project: the need to articulate partner roles and responsibilities, the focus on process as opposed to product, and the willingness to let students’ visions lead the way in aesthetic decisions.

But Storyline originated because small, nimble arts organizations were willing to say yes to new program ideas, a city department reached out for help, and artists got involved as volunteers.

Because its simple structure leaves room for student interpretation and response, Storyline has incredible artistic outcomes.