Arts Education

As the art-world faces the coronavirus pandemic, over a 1,500 artists, curators, writers, educators, and administrators signed an open letter denouncing the treatment of education workers and other essential staffers whose jobs are currently at risk, as reported recently by ArtForum.

The coronavirus pandemic has made all of us shift to online life for school and for work. Shifts to online learning impact arts education as well, turning this moment in "a unique opportunity for students and teachers to develop new strategies for teaching and learning and to reflect and grow as musicians and people.," as the School Band & Orchestra magazine writes.

Mary Dell’Erba and Erika Hawthorne

Reflecting on: What resources are available for arts education organizations seeking immediate relief?

There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and the many cancellations and shutdowns happening in response to it. Working through a crisis isn’t easy, and we applaud our colleagues for persevering to keep equitable access to arts education a priority as we adapt to a new normal.

On April 27, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) announced a new grant competition which would allow select States to expand access to arts courses in K-12 schools. Applications for the Expanding Access to Well-Rounded Courses Demonstration Grants program must be submitted by June 26. ED has outlined that this competitive grant program will have $6.47 million in total funds and estimates it will award about $2 million per year to 2 to 4 States.

As you may know from one of GIA’s previous webinars, “New Horizons in Arts Education: The Student Support and Academic Enrichment program,” the Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) program provides key federal resources that can be used by States, school districts, and schools to provide access to and courses in the arts for our nation’s public school students.

The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) released the latest issue of its journal, the State Education Standard, which focuses on the arts and arts education.

The California Alliance for Arts Education recently announced that Tom DeCaigny has been named the new executive director, beginning in late February.

Sometimes information comes from unexpected places. National information on U.S. students’ engagement and performance in music and visual arts came from an unexpected place: NAEP’s 2019 math assessment, as Claus von Zastrow, principal at Education Commission of the States, wrote in a recent blog post.

In a corner of the reading room in a public library near downtown Brooklyn, an artist/educator guides a group of children through the process of grinding up insects with a mortar and pestle and then using a muller to mix the resulting red powder with water. “By crushing the cochineal beetle,” she says, which lives on cacti in arid regions of Mexico and is still used as a natural food coloring for ketchup and many other processed foods, “medieval and early modern artists could produce this wonderful red color for their paintings.”

New York City’s P.S. 55 Benjamin Franklin, the pre-K to fifth grade public school in the Bronx recently announced a partnership with the nonprofit hip-hop outreach Windows of Hip-Hop and luxury watchmaker Bulova "to build the first-ever recording studio within a New York school, along with creating a hip-hop curriculum," Fast Company reports.