The Arts Count

by | Apr 26, 2024

In May 2018, the Arts Education Partnership published Music Matters. This was the first in a four-part series of special reports that used ArtsEdSearch to illustrate the many benefits of arts education. The Arts Counts series went on to publish Visual Arts Matters,...

Our Shared Future

by | Apr 26, 2024

On April 5-7, 2022, we hosted a virtual event in support of teaching artists across the country. Our Shared Future: Imagining a New Landscape for Teaching Artists featured sessions that dug into the current realities and hopeful futures of teaching artistry.
The Arts Educator Workforce

The Arts Educator Workforce

by | Apr 17, 2024 | General, Teacher Workforce

Addressing the arts educator workforce requires an acknowledgement of the multifaceted challenges that are tethered to it, such as turnover, accessibility and funding. This year, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) began collecting information on improving the...
What’s New in Arts Education Policy?

What’s New in Arts Education Policy?

by | Apr 3, 2024 | General

We hope the anticipation has subsided as this year’s updates to the ArtScan database have finally been released! ArtScan is a comparison of 13 arts education policy areas across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense Education Activity....
The ESSER III Deadline Explained

The ESSER III Deadline Explained

by | Feb 12, 2024 | General

Only a month into the new year, education decisionmakers are at a critical juncture with the looming 2024 deadline for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III funds. These funds provided approximately $190 billion to states, districts and...

Arts Organization Profile Questionnaire

by | Dec 11, 2023

"*" indicates required fields 1. Art Organization Name* 2. Website 3. Contact Name* First Last 4. Job Title or Role 5. Email* 6.Organization Address Line 1 Line 2 City StateAlabamaAlaskaAmerican...
Challenges in Undergraduate Art Education

Challenges in Undergraduate Art Education

by | Oct 8, 2023 | General

The university environment creates a unique intersection of financial, social and academic stressors. Within our research, students identified specific personal and structural issues in their undergraduate experiences. These issues are often exacerbated within arts...
Has Arts Education Failed BIPOC Communities?

Has Arts Education Failed BIPOC Communities?

by | Aug 16, 2023 | General

In 2015, I took a job fresh out of grad school as the inaugural director of ASO Sympatico, the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s El Sistema-inspired music education program. I anticipated being responsible for overseeing music educators, developing branding, building...
The Pursuit of Art and Higher Education

The Pursuit of Art and Higher Education

by | Aug 2, 2023 | General

Why don’t more students pursue art in higher education?   For many students, art is more of an outlet rather than profession, and in a world where student’s lives revolve around academics, art gets sidelined. For our research, I interviewed Liam, an international...

The Arts Count

by | Jun 15, 2023

In May 2018, the Arts Education Partnership published Music Matters. This was the first in a four-part series of special reports that used ArtsEdSearch to illustrate the many benefits of arts education. The Arts Counts series went on to publish Visual Arts Matters,...
What’s New to ArtScan in 2023?

What’s New to ArtScan in 2023?

by | Mar 30, 2023 | Policy

Spring has officially sprung, bringing warmer weather, fresh blooms and a new round of updates to the ArtScan database! AEP collaborates with the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education and Education Commission of the States to update this resource to equip...
Recruitment
Definition:

Regarding the strategies, policies and practices used by higher education and school officials to engage new K-12 teachers.

Questions to Consider:

General:
How are colleges/universities attracting young people to their arts teacher preparation programs?

Young Person:
What would make you feel like teaching in an arts discipline would be a sustainable career?

Retention
Definition:

Regarding the strategies, policies and practices used by school officials to maintain K-12 teachers in the workforce.

Questions to Consider:

Arts Teachers:
What efforts need to be made for you to feel integral to the school community?

What compensation and benefits efforts would you like to see to support your work?

Administrators:
What type of arts specific supports are offered to your arts teachers?

Preparation
Definition:

Regarding the programs, courses and practices to equip new
K-12 teachers with the skills, practices and behaviors for their role, and if required, state certifications.

Questions to Consider:

General:
What are the qualifications for a certified arts teacher?

What pathways exist for arts teacher certification?

New Arts Teachers: 
What prepared you for your first year in the classroom?

Definition:

Regarding the ongoing learning opportunities for K-12 teachers to increase their knowledge in effective teaching practices.

Questions to Consider:

General:
What arts specific professional development opportunities are available for teachers both within and outside of the school district?

Arts Teachers:
What evaluation measures do you feel do not reflect the context of the arts teaching practice?

Administrators:
How is the work of arts teachers taken into consideration when determining evaluation metrics? 

Intervention

There are multiple points throughout the juvenile justice process where arts–based programs can intervene in the lives of youth involved in the system, including during initial contact, correctional placement and reentry. Many of these programs enter juvenile correctional facilities to offer arts activities with support from teaching artists, but there are also diversion and alternative school program opportunities to engage the arts as well. The overall goal of these programs is to reduce recidivism through creative practices that allow youth to grow and discover future possibilities for themselves. 

Baltimore Youth Arts – This program provides entrepreneurship and job training initiatives that support artistic and professional opportunities to young people ages 14–25, focusing on young people involved in the justice system. (Maryland)

Free Verse – Serving youth incarcerated in both juvenile detention centers and inpatient treatment centers, this organization provides arts and humanities–based educational programming within facilities. In 2023, the organization expanded programming to to serve non-incarcerated, justice–involved youth. (Montana)

NOMADstudio – NOMADstudio has developed their Justice Studio in-house after–school art studio program at the Pinellas Regional Juvenile Detention Center where teaching artists host creative sessions with incarcerated students multiple times a week. (Florida)

Performing Statistics – This organization utilizes a variety of art mediums and storytelling to work with youth most impacted by the juvenile justice system to advocate for a world without incarceration. (Virginia)

Prevention

One of the most effective ways to reduce risk factors that may increase juvenile delinquent behaviors is to introduce preventative programs early on to assist children, families and their communities. Preventative programs that incorporate arts–based activities help children develop and strengthen cognitive, regulatory and social and emotional skills that can positively influence their academic and future workforce trajectory.

Miami Music Project – This program aims to empower children to develop values of community, develop creativity, obtain excellence, improve school performance and strengthen family dynamics through studying and performing music. (Florida)

Raw Art Works – Recognizing the unique stories of children, this program provides free painting and filmmaking experiences for kids in grades 4–12 to explore and envision different possibilities for their futures. (Massachusetts)

Arts For Ashes – This program encourages creative transformation through the power of artistic expression among high–risk youth age 9–24 years old. The program developed the award–winning Drawing on Air curriculum which uses expression, connection, and transformation to facilitate youth resiliency and artistic competence through visual and tactile art. (Colorado)

Healing

Youth in the juvenile justice system are commonly exposed to trauma in some capacity, whether before, during or after involvement in the system. Arts–based healing programs address these traumas and help youth build resilience, strengthen coping skills and foster positive self–esteem through modes of art therapy. Arts education and art therapy work hand–in–hand in the juvenile justice space, often overlapping and supporting each other. By offering opportunities for self–expression and reflection , youth can heal in safe environments with trauma-informed supports.  

A Reason To Survive (ARTS) – The ARTS 4 Justice initiative connects system-involved young people with arts programming and community-based projects to address the root causes of systemic violence and injustice in communities across south San Diego. (California)

Mural Arts Philadelphia – This organization offers their Restorative Practices Youth program that provides art and healing-centered engagements to students impacted by the juvenile justice system and transitioning out of foster care networks with hopes of empowering students to discover their creative voices. (Pennsylvania)

My Voice Music – This organization offers community satellite programs that provide instruments and instruction for music groups and recording sessions at mental health treatment centers, juvenile justice facilities, refugee resettlement centers, and social service agencies throughout Oregon. (Oregon)

NeOn Arts – This program is a collaboration between the New York City Department of Probation (DOP) and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute to integrate arts programming within community-based probation centers located throughout New York City, serving young people ages 16–24 years old. (New York)

Transition

Transition programs provide support services for youth who are reentering society from out–of–home placements. Arts–based transitional programs involve collaboration among placement facilities (including correctional institutions), schools, families and communities to provide arts activities that assist youth development for a successful transition.

Big Thought – This organization offers their Creative Solutions program- an arts–as–workforce intervention program for youth who have encountered the justice system. (Texas)

Keshet Arts – Through different justice initiatives, this organization offers post–release arts programming for previously incarcerated young artists/students. Originally focusing on dance programming, the organization has expanded and seeks to increase  community–based and arts-based resources and resource-connectivity. (New Mexico)

The Imagine Bus Project – This organization administers the Arts On The Outs 9–month reentry program for youth who have been released from a juvenile institution. This program provides arts education, individualized life skill building with a case manager, and arts employment. (California)

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

Visit Website

Title: Fluent Nature | Artist: Melli Hoppe | Medium: Film

Visit Website

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

Visit Website

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

Visit Website

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

Visit Website

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.

View Full Image

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

Visit Website

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

Visit Website

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

Visit Website