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Home / How to Expand the Arts in the United States

How to Expand the Arts in the United States

Contents

Cultivating Demand for the Arts

  • Preface
  • Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Affiliate One: Introduction
  • Chapter Two: A Framework for Understanding Supply, Access, and Need
  • Chapter Three: Enabling Private Engagement with Works of Fine art
  • Chapter Four: The Support Infrastructure for Youth Arts Learning
  • Chapter V: The Support Infrastructure for Adult Arts Learning
  • Affiliate Six: The Role of State Arts Agencies
  • Affiliate Vii: Affiliate Seven: Conclusions and Policy Implications
  • Appendix
  • Bibliography

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 Cultivating Demand for the Arts

Despite decades of effort to make high-quality works of art accessible to all Americans, demand for the arts has not kept pace with supply. Those who participate in the arts remain overwhelmingly white, educated, and affluent. Moreover, audiences for the arts are growing older: Each year, fewer young Americans visit art museums, listen to classical music, or attend jazz concerts or ballet performances.

Optimism nigh the future of the arts was widespread in the 1960s and 1970s, when the number of artists and arts organizations expanded apace, and demand surged with increases in supply. Museums, performing arts centers, symphonies, opera companies, theaters, and dance companies proliferated and spread outside the major cities where they had been concentrated. Public funding through the newly created National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and state arts agencies (SAAs), coupled with financial support from major foundations and private contributors, helped accelerate and sustain the growth of arts-producing organizations.

Back up for arts education saw no similar increase, however. While artists and arts organizations benefited from an influx of funds, public funding for arts educational activity stagnated and even declined. In the 1970s and, again, in the early on 1990s, school districts across the country reduced their pedagogy spending, often past cutting arts specialist positions. Many of these positions have never been restored. In more than recent years, general instruction reforms have shifted form time toward reading and mathematics, which are subject to high-stakes testing, further eroding arts instruction.

These trends raise questions about public policy on the arts. To put information technology merely: Will the current priorities and practices of policymakers and major funders meet the challenges created by the diminishing demand? If not, what kinds of adjustments might reverse the turn down? The findings in this study are intended to shed light on what information technology means to cultivate need for the arts, why it is necessary and important to cultivate this demand, and what SAAs and other arts and educational activity policymakers can exercise to help.

Study Purpose and Arroyo

The research we depict here is function of a multiyear written report of the development of SAAs—their missions, budgets, and funding priorities. 2 previous reports produced by this report focused on SAAs' responses to changes in their economical and political environments. The focus here is on the role SAAs have played—and tin can still play—in increasing demand for the arts.

The research considered only the criterion arts central to public policy: ballet, classical music, jazz, musical theater, opera, theater, and the visual arts. It specifically addressed iv questions:

  1. What function does demand play in the creation of a vibrant nonprofit cultural sector?
  2. What office does arts learning play in the cultivation of need?
  3. What does the current support infrastructure for demand wait like, and does information technology develop in individuals the skills needed to stimulate their date with the arts?
  4. How and to what extent have SAAs supported demand in the past, and how can they improve their effectiveness in this role?

To address these issues, we reviewed the relevant literature, analyzed national data on SAA grantmaking over the past xx years, and conducted interviews and roundtable discussions with arts education experts and arts policymakers at the land and federal levels. Our analysis produced bear witness that national and state policies relating to the arts are out of balance: They back up the creation and display/performance (supply) of a wealth of artworks but pay scant attending to developing adults who can sympathize and appreciate artworks (demand). At the same time, didactics policymakers go out little room in the public schoolhouse curriculum for the study of the arts. It is our view that the best way to bring large numbers of Americans to lifelong involvement in the arts is to offer more arts education, to encourage the comprehensive arroyo to teaching called for in the arts standards, and for SAAs to become more active in advocating for such steps and building bridges among policy communities to work toward that goal.

Framework for Understanding Supply and Need

Our understanding of the part of supply and demand in the arts is based on the concept that works of art are instruments of potential advice. Much has been written about the ways in which the communication that can occur betwixt the artist and the people who encounter the artist's work enhances those people'south lives, fosters personal growth, and contributes positively to the public sphere. These benefits depend for their existence on a particular kind of experience, which nosotros call the aesthetic feel, that actively involves the spectator's senses, emotions, and intellect. For an aesthetic experience to take place, three components are necessary: a work of fine art (supply), an opportunity to encounter it (access), and an individual with the capacity to have such a response to it (need).

Figure South.1 illustrates the human relationship between supply, access, and demand equally they relate to the arts. At the heart of the diagram is the individual experience of a work of art, which is made possible past the institutions and individuals that contribute to supply on the one manus and demand on the other. Supporting the supply of fine art is a vast infrastructure of artists, universities that train them, performing groups, presenters, record companies, libraries, publishers, and many others that contribute to the creation, conservation, display, and dissemination of artworks. Supporting demand, on the other mitt, are the individuals and institutions that assistance draw people into date with the arts and teach them what to notice and value in the meet. The primary actors here are teachers in the kindergarten through grade 12 (G–12) school organization, private instructors and teaching artists, journalists and critics, and the parents, relatives, and friends who serve every bit mentors in the arts they love. With this framework, "cultivating demand" is not primarily about marketing campaigns and public outreach; it is about giving people the skills and knowledge they need to take encounters with works of fine art that are rich enough to keep them coming back for more.


Many agents that operate primarily on one side of the framework also play some role on the other (for instance, many artists besides teach the arts; many teachers too create art). And agents on both sides of the framework promote opportunities for broader access to the arts. Finally, every bit the figure shows, all parts of the system are influenced by funders and policymakers.

Information technology follows, then, that public organizations defended to the state'southward cultural well-being should consider three objectives in pursuing their missions: expand supply by increasing the production of high-quality works of art, expand access past creating more opportunities for people to encounter such works, and expand need by cultivating the chapters of individuals to accept aesthetic experiences with works of arts. The third of these, which has received the to the lowest degree attending from arts policymakers, was the focus of our research.

Cultivating Need

We explored the inquiry literature to find whether arts education is associated with the capacity for aesthetic experiences that lead to hereafter involvement and, if then, whether the type of arts teaching matters. On the first issue, empirical studies show that level of education in general, and arts education in item, is strongly associated with developed interest in the arts. On the 2nd issue, a rich torso of conceptual inquiry examines the kind of arts learning nearly likely to enable that involvement. Many arts education scholars writing in the terminal half of the 20th century accept identified skills and noesis that enable learners to enter into such experiences. Nosotros synthesize such learning into four types:

  1. the chapters for aesthetic perception, or the ability to see, hear, and feel what works of fine art have to offer
  2. the ability to create artistically in an art form
  3. historical and cultural noesis that enriches the understanding of works of art
  4. the ability to interpret works of art, discern what is valuable in them, and draw meaning from them through reflection and discussion with others.

These skills and knowledge are the content of what we phone call comprehensive arts education, through which individuals learn non only to create, merely also to capeesh and understand works of art. This approach is closely aligned with principles articulated more recently in the national and state arts content standards. Although there are even so many schools of thought about how the arts should be taught, the standards represent broad consensus amongst practitioners and policymakers and define common footing between supporters of arts-based instruction (which focuses on studio art or performance) and supporters of humanities-based instruction (which focuses on appreciation). These standards were forged from a long tradition of theory and practise in arts education that confirms the value of a broad-based arroyo to teaching the arts.

Institutional Support for Arts Learning

To what extent are Americans given the opportunity for what we refer to as comprehensive arts education? Although the information on arts learning in any setting are limited, rendering any portrait of this mural largely incomplete, we reviewed what is known about all forms of arts instruction, both formal and informal, for people of all ages. What the prove shows is that institutional support for any type of arts pedagogy is weak. The immature are non provided enough instructional time to develop the skills and knowledge associated with long-term arts appointment, college students have many more opportunities to practice and then, and adults seldom participate in arts learning opportunities of any kind.

For schoolhouse-age Americans, 4 components make up the arts learning infrastructure:

  1. The 1000–12 public school organization, which is the primary source of arts learning for the young. No other system has so much access to the young, the resource with which to teach them, and the responsibility for ensuring they have equal opportunity to become knowledgeable virtually the arts. Recent surveys suggest, however, that a significant proportion of schools around the country offer minimal arts education.

  2. College didactics, which plays several critical supporting roles in the commitment of arts learning to the young, the most of import of which is grooming and offering ongoing professional development to classroom teachers and arts specialists who work in the Thou–12 system. Many colleges and universities also house museums, performing arts centers, and community schools of the arts, all of which offer educational programs. Some too host or contribute to afterwards-school programs in the arts.

  3. Public after-school programs, which are a source of arts learning that draws on a multitude of arts providers in the communities around schools. Nigh of these teach coincidental art-making or emphasize child-evolution outcomes.

  4. Arts learning in the community, which is offered to school-age children past arts organizations, customs service organizations, and community schools of the arts both after school and on weekends. Most of these programs focus on art-making and performance.

Arts learning for adults consists of three components:

  1. Higher education institutions, which are by far the most of import sources of broad-based arts education for adults. This is in add-on to their primary focus on preparing professional artists, arts specialists, general classroom teachers, and scholars.

  2. Arts learning in the community, which is offered to adults through arts organizations and, to a lesser extent, community schools of the arts and customs service organizations. Museums are seriously committed to their education mission, the goal of which is to enrich people'due south experiences of works of fine art in their collections. Performing arts organizations are offering considerably more educational programming than they did even x years agone, but programs for adult audiences of arts organizations are still limited in scope and reach.

  3. Arts journalism, which has played a disquisitional role in developing informed audiences for the arts but has been losing ground in newspapers across the land. Experienced journalists, including film, theater, trip the light fantastic, and visual arts critics, are existence squeezed out. Unless such discourse fully migrates to the Internet, and this medium can support career development and stability for arts critics, the breakdown in the traditional transmission of arts news and criticism is likely to weaken demand for the arts.

State Funding of the Arts

Has arts policy supported the kind of comprehensive arts learning that all-time cultivates demand? To respond this question, we analyzed xx years of data on grants awarded past SAAs to assess the relative proportion of funding devoted to the three policy objectives introduced earlier: expanding the quantity of high-quality artworks, creating more than opportunities for people to encounter such works, and cultivating individuals' chapters to have aesthetic experiences.

We plant that between 60 and 70 pct of the value of grants awarded from 1987 to 2004 went to institutional support, mostly for arts organizations, and to the cosmos, exhibition, and preservation of art. Less than ten percent was specifically devoted to arts learning. And although roughly i-quarter of the value of SAA grants went in function to support activities that grantees considered educational, the niggling we know about those activities suggests that many if not most of them are designed to expand access rather than to develop the skills and noesis associated with long-term arts engagement.

Recently, even so, a number of SAAs moved across grantmaking to work with land education departments, arts educators, and arts organizations to improve arts education policy at the state level. Two of these SAAs, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the New Jersey Land Council on the Arts, accept had particular success leveraging their position at the nexus of state regime and the arts community to strengthen youth arts education. By promoting collaborations among arts educators, arts advocates, arts policymakers, and artists and arts organizations, they have achieved far more they could take by relying exclusively on their own limited grantmaking budgets. Specifically, they have helped arts educators develop country arts content standards and curricular frameworks for Chiliad–12 education, determine the amount and reach of arts education around their states, heighten the visibility of arts education with both the public and elected officials, and develop tools for assessing educatee proficiency in the arts.

Policy Implications

Our assay implies that in line with their mandate to support and encourage public interest in the arts, SAAs should consider giving more priority to cultivating need for the arts. This does not necessarily mean they should replace grants designed to expand supply and admission with grants designed to cultivate demand; there may exist other tools bachelor that volition serve. In fact, some SAAs accept already demonstrated that the apply of such tools as convening and advocacy tin can be very effective in promoting arts education in the public schools and the broader arts community—peradventure more effective than grants. Nevertheless, placing greater emphasis on need volition require SAAs to reallocate some resource from individuals and organizations operating on the supply and access portions of the arts infrastructure to those operating on the demand side.

To evaluate their options, SAAs should consider several questions:

  • What is the status of youth arts learning in the state? Before an SAA tin brainstorm to assistance remediate problems in youth arts learning, it must have a good agreement of the overall environment. A scattering of states, with the help of their SAAs, have conducted assessments, and state policymakers are using the survey information to place gaps and inequities and to develop strategies for addressing them.

  • What tin an SAA exercise to raise public sensation of the need for comprehensive arts learning inside and across the schools? Time and money will not exist made available for arts education unless state residents and their political leaders are convinced that arts education should be a bones part of K–12 teaching. SAAs are uniquely positioned within state regime to advocate for the benefits of aesthetic engagement and the necessity of promoting such appointment through education.

  • How tin can an SAA best contribute to policy changes that will strengthen arts education in the public schoolhouse organisation? No single group of stakeholders has the resources or clout essential for bringing about change in full general didactics policy at the state level. SAAs are likely to be more effective in this area as influencers and conveners of the disparate stakeholders in support of standards-based arts education in schools.

  • How can an SAA all-time contribute to policy changes that will strengthen arts learning in the customs? An SAA can focus its education grantmaking on organizations that contribute to comprehensive arts learning. If SAAs wait at the arts learning infrastructure as a whole, they may likewise be able to suggest artists, arts organizations, and other arts learning providers on where the gaps are—and fund individuals and institutions that can fill up those gaps.

  • How can an SAA identify and promote programs likely to lead to adult involvement in the arts? SAAs can piece of work with other organizations to bring recognition to exemplary programs in their states—educational programs, professional evolution programs, instructor preparation programs, and local collaborative networks in support of arts learning. In this mode, they can influence practitioners to offering standards-based arts education and develop public support for such programs at the same time.

For other policymakers and funders, the key implication of our piece of work is that greater attention should exist directed to drawing more Americans into lifelong involvement in the arts. Of the many potentially constructive strategies for achieving this objective, we brand three recommendations:

  • Back up enquiry to inform policy. More than inquiry is needed to illuminate the human relationship between comprehensive arts learning and long-term arts participation. For instance, studies are needed to test what the conceptual literature (and personal ascertainment) supports: that developing the skills of aesthetic perception and interpretation, for example, can increase the satisfaction people get from their encounters with the arts, and the higher their satisfaction, the more they demand such experiences.

  • Support collaborative programs that increase the amount and breadth of arts learning .We have offered a broad view of the support infrastructure for arts learning so that policymakers can determine where and how they might take the near leverage in spurring improvements. For the young, for example, nosotros take highlighted disquisitional gaps in arts learning opportunities. Many of these tin can only exist addressed by changes in land pedagogy policy. Just policymakers should identify and support promising programs offered by arts organizations, higher instruction institutions, and local collaborative networks to strengthen school-based arts education.

  • Advocate for change in land education policy to bring arts instruction to all students . Increased time for arts instruction is needed at all grade levels in the public schools, a need that cannot be met without pregnant changes in state education policy. Arts content standards at present exist in nearly every state, but K–12 children will not be provided with more and amend arts education until states follow through with an accountability arrangement and ask districts to report on arts instruction provided and learning achieved. Unless state boards of education require such results, their arts standards and mandates volition exist ignored.

To bring nearly reform in state education policy, however, communities that have often worked at cantankerous-purposes will take to achieve out to 1 another and forge a common agenda. Those that will play the central roles are the arts policy community (which includes the NEA and SAAs), leaders in the arts community (such as directors of major arts organizations and the business leaders on their boards), and the professional associations that represent the thousands of arts educators beyond the state. Only by working together can these communities persuade the general pedagogy community—and the public—of the importance of arts learning in cartoon more Americans into engagement with the culture around them.

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    Source: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/summary-cultivating-demand-for-the-arts.aspx