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The Art and Craft of Successful
Partnerships
General Information
Terminology in
Education and the Arts
Bibliography
Appendix
A key ingredient to
effective
arts-education/arts-in-education
efforts is “the partnership” between
schools and arts organizations, or
between teachers and professional
artists who work primarily in
educational environments.
Successful partnerships assume that
everyone is in agreement regarding
who and what they are! There are a
number of resources that address
“successful partnerships” by
example, but their descriptions do
not always articulate the common
characteristics of such partnerships
nor the qualifying criteria that
earn them the title. It is,
therefore, incumbent upon the user
of the Toolkit to draw from
these models the characteristics
that best apply to their own
situation.
The most prominent New York State
networks of partnerships are funded
by the New York State Council on the
Arts. The
Empire State Partnerships are
multi-year projects located
throughout New York State that
combine arts organizations with
schools primarily to institute and
maintain integrated
arts-in-education programs. A list
of current and formerly funded
partnerships may be found on
their website with a description of
individual projects’ specific
achievements.
The
Empire State Partnerships (ESP)
were in part created to give
concrete definitions to the nature
of successful partnerships between
schools and arts and cultural
organizations, between teachers and
teaching artists, between the
community and the school. ESP
conducts a yearly summer seminar,
which produces a wealth of valuable
resources, and many of them can be
found on the ESP website’s
resource page . Particularly
notable, the
Partnership Planning Worksheet,
formulated by consultant Nan
Westervelt, will guide
teacher-teaching artist teams
through the planning process,
resulting in an effective arts
residency that meets the teacher’s
curriculum needs, while providing a
quality arts experience for
students.
Partners for Arts Education,
which administers the School Arts
Partnership (SAP) grants throughout
New York State, lists profiles of
successful
arts education programs funded
by SAP Grants.
Toolkit
users will benefit from studying the
results of these and other
partnerships before they begin to
plan their own proposals for
funding. They will discover what
kinds of projects work best, and
what models best fit their own
situations.
The
Arts Education Partnership (AEP)
is a helpful resource on the subject
of partnership, as has the Center
for Arts Education in New York
City. AEP constitutes a unique
national forum and private coalition
of more than 140 education, arts,
business, philanthropic, civic and
government organizations, working
together to demonstrate and promote
the essential role of arts education
in enabling all students to succeed
in school, life, and work. In 1999,
the
U.S. Department of Education and
the
National Endowment for the Arts
commissioned the AEP to develop a
guide to building and sustaining
successful partnerships. The
publication and accompanying
website,
Learning Partnerships: Improving
Learning in Schools with Arts
Partners in the
Community,
offers guidance to community leaders
on strategies for combining their
expertise and resources in support
of arts-education programs for young
people.
Both the
Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts
Education, and
The Lincoln Center Institute
have given deep thought to the
nature of partnerships and their
examples and commentary are well
worth studying as well.
Many agencies that fund partnerships
offer summaries of model projects
that have been funded by the agency
in the past. Reading about model
partnerships is helpful in that
general planning techniques,
teaching strategies, and ideology
can be extracted by the reader to be
formulated to his or her own
particular circumstances, audience,
and curriculum.
You can read about model
partnerships at the
National Arts Policy Database
website as well. The Project
Profiles portion of the Database
features outlines of thousands of
successful arts education programs
and includes projects with varied
circumstances and goals in
wide-ranging settings, all
illustrating innovative
programming. The website allows
users to enable advances search
functions, making specific queries
easy to perform.
In recent years, the
Chicago Arts Partnership in
Education (CAPE) has developed
resources that document the process
of developing, implementing, and
assessing arts-integrated
curriculum. In addition to these
planning resources, the CAPE website
holds a wealth of information
stemming from the organization’s
research and successful partnerships
program. Before beginning an
in-school partnership, CAPE suggests
observing the state of the arts in
the partnering school. For this,
they provide
CAPE Partnership Planning
Assessment
Form – Evidence of Arts Integration
in a School.
For the planning process itself,
CAPE has formulated the
Arts Education Partnership Planning
Guide at the School Level
to assist in the development of a
strategy for the program.
Also helpful is their document,
Characteristics of an Arts
Partnership
published by the Chicago
Arts Partnership in Education,
which prescribes the basic elements
of a successful partnership. Once a
partnership is in progress, you can
use CAPE’s
Partnership Criteria
document for evaluation purposes.
It will help involved parties to
assess a program through the
worksheet’s given indicators of an
effective arts education
partnership.
Terminology in Education and the
Arts
One fact of life for any future
partners is their need for speaking
a common language when talking about
what common programming is to
ensue. Some resources to help
address this need:
Education Terms
Lexicon of Learning
by the Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development (ASCD) http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.
4247f922ca8c9ecc8c2a9410d3108a0c/
National School Board Association
Search
http://www.nsba.org/site/keywords.asp?TRACKID=
School Wise Press
Glossary of Educational Terms
http://www.schoolwisepress.com/smart/dict/dict.html
Frequently Used Education Terms
by SwabLearning.org
http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.asp?r=40
Education Terminology Every Parent
Must Understand
by the Texas Education Consumers
Association
http://www.nychold.com/hirsch-termin.html
Glossary of Educational Terms and
Acronyms
– San Diego City Schools Resource
http://www.sandi.net/parents/glossary.htm
Eye On Education Glossary
– A resource of WGBH Boston Public
Television
http://www.eyeoneducation.tv/glossary/
Aesthetic and Artistic Terms
AIE Definitions drafted by Local
Capacity Building Coordinators
http://www.espartsed.org/media/AIE_Definitions.doc
ArtLex Art Dictionary
http://www.artlex.com/
Bibliography
Dreeszen, C. (1992).
Intersections II: Community Arts and
Education Collaborations.
Commissioned by the National
Endowment for the Arts, a national
study was conducted to report on
community arts and education
collaborations. Researching these
collaborations, it investigates both
the successful and unsuccessful
partnerships in the community and
educators on behalf of arts in
education. The publication outlines
basic steps in developing
partnerships, systems of support,
typical problems and common trends
and challenges in arts education
collaborations. This publication
may be purchased at www.umass.edu.
Fox, L. & Goodheart, C.
Creative Schools, Connected
Communities: Developing Partnership
for Arts Education.
Publisher: New Horizons for
Learning.
This valuable resource provides
information on developing
partnerships for arts education.
The author suggests that the
relationships between the arts and
learning have not been well
articulated or well documented, and
seeks to rectify this absence.
Advocating arts education, the
author outlines the major benefits
for students and the community. The
arts not only help students to
understand the world, but provide
languages for expressing these
understandings, develop intellectual
skills, and contribute to social and
emotional growth. The need for art
partnerships, and the principles of
partnerships within the community
are outlined and discussed. To view
more information on developing
partnerships for arts education
visit http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/goodheart2.htm.
Ellis, D. M., & Dreeszen, C. (2003).
For the Greater Good: Frameworks
for Advancing State Arts Education
Partnerships.
Publisher: National Assembly of
State Arts Agencies.
Based on a workshop conducted during
November of 2001, this report
provides information to states
interested in advancing in arts
education. A group of state-level
arts education networks representing
Florida, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio
and South Carolina developed this
report, to provide a guide for other
states.
A Guide to Arts and Education
Collaboration.
Publisher: Arts Education
Partnership.
This publication focuses on art
partnerships and collaborations
within the community. It
investigates various aspects of
partnerships and guides readers
through three main components:
thought process and beginning
stages, preparation and initiation
of collaboration, and growth of
partnerships. To access this
document through PDF format, visit
www.aep-arts.org/files/partnership/LearningPartnerships.pdf.
Irwin, R. L., & Kindler, A. M. (eds).
Beyond the School: Community and
Institutional Partnerships in Art
Education.
Publisher: National Arts Education
Association.
Collaboration, partnership and
community are the dominating themes
of this text. Strengthening
communities through arts
involvement, it guides development
of new alliances, and is filled with
personal experience and reflection.
It encourages collaborative
partnerships which foster the growth
of arts education beyond school
walls. It provides ways in which
learning can be innovative, and can
be extended with the support of
communal resources, as well as
outside partners who can provide
expertise, insight and additional
funds.
Appendix
Arts Education Partnership Planning
Guide at the School Level
Chicago Arts Partnership in
Education
Arts In Education Partnership
Planning Session Workshop
Chicago Arts Partnership in
Education
Empire State Partnership Program
Information
New York State Council on the Arts
Partnership Planning Process
Checklist
Nan Westervelt
What Makes an Effective and
Sustainable Arts & Education
Partnership
Arts Extension Service |
