Jane R. Best

Jane was formerly the director of the Arts Education Partnership.
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Elevating the Meaningful Work of AEP Partner Organizations
Jane R. Best
07 December 2016

The Arts Education Partnership (AEP) became a center within Education Commission of the States late last year. As part of its mission, AEP is committed to elevating the meaningful work […]

Promising Practices in Arts Education
Jane R. Best
20 July 2016

The Arts Education Partnership (AEP), the newest center at Education Commission of the States, continues to be showcasing the promising practices of partner organizations and other practitioners across the country. This […]

The Arts Education Partnership, ESSA and a Well-Rounded Education
Jane R. Best
11 May 2016

As the new Director of the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), I am eager to build on AEP’s 20-year legacy of working to ensure all students have access to the benefits […]

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits