ARTS EDUCATION ADVOCACY STATEMENT

Arts Education is Essential

It is imperative that all students have access to an equitable delivery of arts education that includes dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts that supports their educational, social, and emotional wellbeing, taught by certified professional arts educators in partnership with community arts providers.

Teaching and learning will never quite be the same in our post-COVID-19 world. However, our commitment to provide rich and varied educational experiences remains unwavering. The arts have played an important role in these tumultuous times and will continue to do so for all students, including the traditionally underrepresented, those with special needs, and from low- income families. Here’s why:

Arts education supports the social and emotional well-being of students, whether through distance learning or in person. Self-awareness, self-efficacy, self-management and perseverance, social awareness and relationship skills are central to any arts education activity, no matter the age and ability of the student or the environment in which the learning takes place. The arts, with their strong emphasis on team building and self-reflection are supremely suited to re-ignite students’ interest in learning through collaboration, while simultaneously fostering creativity, critical thinking, and communication.

Arts education nurtures the creation of a welcoming school environment where students can express themselves in a safe and positive way. Celebrating our ability to come together as educators and students is vital to creating a healthy and inclusive school community. The arts, through a rich partnership among certified arts educators, teaching artists, and community arts providers, play a valuable role in helping students and their families build and sustain community and cultural connections.

Arts education is part of a well-rounded education for all students as understood and supported by federal and state policymakers. As defined in ESSA, “music and the arts” are part of a well-rounded education. Every state in the nation recognizes the importance of the arts as reflected in rigorous PreK-12 state arts standards. Forty-six states require an arts credit to receive a high school diploma and 43 states have instructional requirements in the arts for elementary and secondary schools. As noted in Arts Education for America’s Students: A Shared Endeavor: “An education without the arts is inadequate.”

The healing and unifying power of the arts has been evident as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the country. We have seen and heard it play out through works of art on sidewalks, shared musical moments from porches, in plays and dance performances, and every other imaginable iteration of art making. As states and schools work through multiple challenges in the years ahead, arts education must remain central to a well-rounded education and fully funded to support the wellbeing of all students and the entire school community.

LARGE ENSEMBLE ADVOCACY STATEMENT

For as long as there have been people, there has been music. Music makes us more human and making music together makes us better people. Music making with others teaches empathy, acceptance, and understanding. Music making is essential to the human experience. 

Large ensembles are a place for innovation, for creation of new music, for support of living composers, for artistic expression, for pushing boundaries, for exploring new technologies, for exploring and understanding diverse populations, for aesthetic experience, and for the exploration of creativity with others. Large ensembles create a pathway for students to contribute to something larger than themselves as both individual artists and members of society. 

Within schools and departments of music, large ensembles act as building blocks of a community, providing experiences for individuals to develop interpersonal skills through elements of musicianship and human connection. In addition to artistic and communal fellowship, large ensembles serve in recruitment of majors and non-majors, generate credit hours, and actively engage with the community in a variety of ways, including annual graduation activities, outreach concerts to middle/high schools, touring, and recording. 

CBDNA believes that the communal large ensemble experience is invaluable and irreplaceable.