Arts Education
Grantmakers in the Arts holds arts education as one of its core funding focus areas. GIA is committed to invigorate funding and support for arts education within federal policy and defend that every resident has access to the arts as part of a well-rounded, life-long education. In 2012, GIA formed the Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC), an interest group within GIA, to address identified needs in comprehensive arts education and to strengthen communication and networking among arts education funders. Advised by a committee of Coalition members, GIA engaged the services of Washington, DC-based Penn Hill Group, a firm with education policy expertise and experience working with diverse education groups to research, develop, and promote educational policy strategies.
Most recently, GIA worked with Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) on the development of the Arts Education for All Act, the broadest arts education policy bill ever introduced in Congress.
In Spring 2021, GIA influenced the U.S. Department of Education to highlight the importance of equitable access to arts and culture to the process of reopening schools and to make explicit how racialized this access was prior to the pandemic and that addressing this inequity is essential to effective reopening.
Grantmakers in the Arts is delighted that in 2020 Congress passed the Supporting Older Americans Act, including our recommendations that the Administration on Aging include the arts in the issues to be identified and addressed and be included among supportive services for older Americans.
GIA has successfully lobbied to include arts-related provisions in the Child Care for Working Families Act, which proposes to better help low-income families pay for childcare and expand high-quality state preschool options.
GIA is extremely proud of our work over the past several years on raising the visibility of the arts in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in its legislative form. GIA and Penn Hill Group continue these advocacy efforts around the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), guiding GIA members and their grantees in advocating for new or expanded arts programs at their local schools and districts.
In the tradition of Dana, an ancient Pali word meaning generosity or giving, the Dana Foundation funded the Dana Arts and Cognition Consortium in July 2004, to study the effect of the arts on learning. At the GIA conference in Los Angeles, October 2005, Michael Gazzaniga, director of the Consortium1, described a three-year study being undertaken by the Con-sortium as "the first extensive scientific attempt to provide a comprehensive picture of the role of arts education in changing the brain."
Read More...2005, 20 pages. National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, 1029 Vermont Avenue, NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20005, 202-347-6352, nasaa@nasaa-arts.org. Arts Education Partnership, One Massachusetts Avenue NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431, 202-326-8693, bossmanager@aep-arts.org
Read More...National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, 520 8th Avenue, Suite 302, New York, NY 10018, (212) 268-3337
This handbook outlines best practices that arose from the Partners in Excellence Initiative to promote arts education partnerships between community and public schools. The guide begins by defining a partnership, continues with how to build and sustain one, and concludes with a chapter on evaluation and assessment. PDF available for download at website.
Read More...Beginning in 1999, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched a global initiative to strengthen arts education. In 2003, Portuguese delegates to the United Nations called for a global conference to address this aim, resulting in the first-ever World Conference on Arts Education. The World Conference brought together 1,200 artists, educators, policy makers, and researchers from over ninety-seven countries in Lisbon, Portugal from March 6-9, 2006.
Read More...2005, 158 pages. Arts Education Partnership , One Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431, 202-336-7016, aep@ccsso.org
The Arts Education Partnership's new book, Third Space: when learning matters, should be required reading for anyone involved in what promises to be a lively and contentious debate around the 2007 reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Read More...2005, 24 pages. Washington State Arts Commission, 711 Capitol Way S. Suite 600, PO Box 42675, Olympia, WA 98504-2675, 360-753-3860, info@arts.wa.gov
Read More...October 2005, 200 pages, $19.95. New Village Press, Oakland, CA, 510-420-1361, www.newvillagepress.net
A Beginner's Guide to Community-based Arts is a wonderfully designed and accessible training guidebook for teachers, artists, and activists wanting to use art as a vehicle for social change. Lead writer Mat Schwarzman and cartoonist Keith Knight create graphic profiles of ten exemplary practitioners followed by activities, exercises, discussion questions, and resources on how to connect with and develop art emanating out of a particular community.
Read More...2004, 18 pages. Los Angeles County Arts Commission, 500 West Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012, 213-974-1343
Download pdf: www.lacountyarts.org/artsed/docs/artsedu_artsforall09-02.pdf
Read More...2005, 139 pages. Dance/USA, 1156 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20005, 202-833-1717, www.danceusa.org
Read More...The Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association, using a three-year grant from Hewlett Packard in 2001, has created the Tribal Digital Village (TDV). Using a high-performance wireless backbone, the TDV project delivers wireless broadband to community centers, fire stations, sheriff substations, Tribal administration buildings, and Tribal libraries in-and-around eighteen tribal reservations. This long-distance, point-to-point, wireless system is ideally suited to the geographically diverse area that required coverage.
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