Art lessons from NYC: use city's rich resources to restore arts education

by Jolley Bruce Christman

Not long ago, draconian budget cuts decimated arts education in New York City's public schools. Music and art teachers disappeared from school rosters as principals confronted harsh choices about what was essential and what was “luxury” in an era of austerity. The Board of Education drastically streamlined its support role.

But today, an abundance of arts-focused partnerships and a re-commitment by the New York City Board of Education to the arts make it a model for arts education.

How did New York's arts education bound back from the bleak days of the 1980s and 90s? Strong intermediary organizations advocating for the arts and brokering vibrant partnerships and a responsive NYC Board of Education are big parts of the answer.

A huge catalyst was Walter Annenberg's $20 million challenge grant. The Center for Arts Education (CAE), an intermediary organization established in 1997 with Annenberg funding, aimed its efforts at “restoring” the arts in the city's curriculum and budget while building a model for collaboration among schools, artists, cultural institutions, community groups, and colleges.

CAE reached out to form an alliance with the Department of Education, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, and the United Federation of Teachers. Together, they mounted a public awareness campaign about the value of the arts. They put signs on buses and created high visibility for student art work by mounting exhibitions in public spaces. CAE also provided up to $60,000 for worthy partnerships between schools and arts organizations.

Meredith McNeal, a longtime community-based arts educator, commented that the CAE “shamed the Department of Education into paying some attention to the arts. Of course it also generated lots of partnerships through its grants programs.” A survey by the Arts in Education Roundtable shows that during 2004-05 local arts organizations contributed $25 million of their own funding to public school arts programming.

The New York State Department of Education has also played an important role in the city's arts education renaissance by creating Empire State Partnerships (ESP). Less interested in efforts around the edges, ESP is dedicated to transforming schools through the arts.

ESP offers a summer seminar for school planning teams and has established leadership networks so that existing expertise can be tapped by schools beginning to envision how the arts might change their schools. At this summer's seminar, school teams will create a vision for a new school culture where the arts play a central role. They will then use “backward design” as a planning tool for making that vision a reality.

What do ESP partnerships look like in action? At IS 49 in Brooklyn, the recent exhibit Body Works displayed students' artistic interpretations – painting and sculptures – of internal organs. Together, the Rotunda Gallery and IS 49 established a permanent gallery space in the school. Contemporary artists from the neighborhood worked with IS 49 teachers and students to integrate art-making into the science curriculum. Body Works was one of three exhibits mounted at the school last year.