NASA Seeks Student Artwork Submissions

NASA is seeking student art for its 2020 "We Are Going" contest.

“We Are Going” includes Americans of all ages. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia is inviting students grades K-12 to creatively visualize NASA’s science, technology and human exploration activities in the 2020 NASA Art Contest, using the theme “We Are Going.” The contest is open to all children grades K-12 attending public, private, parochial and homeschools who are residents of the United States.

The Art Contest submission period begins  Dec. 1, 2019  and concludes on Dec. 31, 2019 at midnight EST.

Learn more and submit >>

Gov. Cuomo Announces Creative Aging Initiative Led by Lifetime Arts

From Lifetime Arts:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the launch of a three-region Creative Aging Initiative to provide hands-on art-making programs that support comprehensive physical and mental health benefits for older New Yorkers and combat social isolation. Created by a new partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Office for the Aging, the Creative Aging Initiative takes an innovative, evidence-based approach to healthy aging, underscoring New York’s leadership as the first age-friendly state in the nation.

Beginning as a pilot in spring 2020, the new initiative will serve up to 500 older adults at up to 12 senior centers and libraries throughout Long Island, the Capital Region and the North Country. The initiative will also create jobs for professional teaching artists, who will lead hands-on skill-building workshops in a variety of creative disciplines, building on extensive research demonstrating the role of the arts in improving health outcomes for older adults.

The program will be administered by Lifetime Arts and will build on a successful 2017 New York State Council on the Arts-Monroe County Office of the Aging arts programming pilot in Rochester that delivered services in four senior centers citywide.

Founded in New York State in 2008, Lifetime Arts has designed and led several Creative Aging capacity-building initiatives in New York State along with multiple others across the U.S. serving over well over 10,000 older adults and training over 1,500 teaching artists and hundreds of librarians, aging service professionals and community arts organizations.

Lifetime Arts co-founder and CEO Maura O’Malley said, “Lifetime Arts is pleased to work with this cross-sector alliance to advance Creative Aging in our home state. By implementing a proven program model that embraces older adults as learners, expands the impact of teaching artists and provides community organizations with a positive and creative approach to programming, this work will enrich the lives of older adults in New York. Importantly, it will provide a replicable model for other states as the population continues to age at a rapid rate.”

Mass Cultural Council Launches Teaching Artist Fellowship

From Mass Cultural Council:

A new program from Mass Cultural Council is stepping into a significant and systemic gap in the youth arts ecosystem. The Creative Youth Development Teaching Artist Fellowship Pilot Program supports teaching artists in Creative Youth Development (CYD) programs throughout Massachusetts through a series of group learning sessions, site visits, and grants.

Built on the model of the Music Educator and Teaching Artist (META) Fellowship, a partnership of The Klarman Family Foundation and Mass Cultural Council, this new pilot program covers all disciplines in the arts, interpretive sciences, and humanities. By balancing individual learning and artistry with the development of a tightly knit community of practice, the CYD Fellowship has immediate impacts in the classroom and long-term impacts for the field.

Learn more about the program here >>

Young People’s Chorus of NYC Makes the News

Young People's Chorus of NYC was recently featured for their work with young people across the five boroghs.

"It is the mission of the YPC to provide children of all cultural and economic backgrounds with a unique program of music education and choral performance that seeks to fulfill each child's potential while creating a model of diversity that enriches the community."

The piece features the stories of YPC's founder Francisco J. Núñez, who has worked for decades now to bring music to young people across the city.

See the full clip here >>

Adobe Creative Youth Development Grants

Adobe is now offereing several grants for organizations who do creative youth development work. From Adobe:

In partnership with TakingITGlobal, Adobe supports a global network of creative youth development organizations that are working to ensure equitable access to creative education for youth ages 13 to 24. Creative youth development organizations help young people build their creative skills and prepare for success in school, life, and work.

Creative Catalyst Award ($50,000 USD) Due January 9

The Adobe Creative Catalyst Award recognizes outstanding community-based youth organizations that support young people’s creative development and engage creativity as a force for positive youth development and social impact.

Project & Collaboration Grants ($5000 to $7000 USD) Due June 15

Project & Collaboration grants allow creative youth development organizations to implement a project or collaboration that expands or deepens the creative opportunities they provide youth.

Hardware Grants ($2000 to $5000 USD) Due June 15

Creative youth development organizations may apply for a grant of $2,000 to $5,000 USD to access hardware needed for digital media projects. This could include computers, cameras, iPhones, iPads, 360 video cameras, drones, etc.

Learn more about the grants >>

New Data: Who Is Taking Art Classes?

After the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the arts was cut from the budget this year, researchers found a new way to explore who has access to arts classes: the NAEP’s 2019 math assessment.

In a blog post from the Education Commission on the States, they write that "the math assessment can’t tell us much about how students performed in the arts, but it did ask students the following question: Are you taking an art course this school year (for example, drawing, painting, or studio art)?"

From the report:

In one respect, though, the math assessment does the arts assessment one better: Where NAEP arts offered only national results, the mathematics assessment provides data broken out by state.

Here are the big takeaways from our analysis:

Thirty-seven percent of eighth graders say they were taking an art course in 2019.
There are stark differences among states, where art course-taking ranges from a low of 16% to a high of 68%.
There are also disparities by students’ race, ethnicity, family income and school location.

The 2019 results largely confirm results from the 2016 NAEP arts assessment: In 2016, 43% of eighth graders said they had taken an art course that year; and results varied by race, ethnicity, gender, family income and school location.

Read the full post here >>

Priscilla Kane Hellweg to receive Massachusetts Nonprofit Network Lifetime

Guild Member Organization Enchanted Circle Theater (Holyoke, MA)

The Massachusetts Nonprofit Network (MNN) has announced that Priscilla Kane Hellweg, Executive and Artistic Director of Enchanted Circle Theater (Holyoke, MA), and Darnell Williams, President and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, will be the recipients of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Awards.

“We are pleased to honor Priscilla and Darnell for their inspiring careers and for their invaluable contributions to the state’s nonprofit sector,” said Jim Klocke, CEO of MNN. “Their lives of service have made indelible impacts on the lives of people across the Commonwealth.”

“I am incredibly honored to be chosen by the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network for a Lifetime Achievement Award,” said Kane Hellweg. “To be a part of that moment of inspiration when children, youth, and adults feel their own creative potential is beyond inspiring. Thank you for this vote of confidence!”

Every year, MNN honors outstanding leaders who have made lasting contributions to the Massachusetts nonprofit sector. Past Lifetime Achievement Award winners include Hubie Jones, Carol Duncan, Paul Grogan, Beth Smith, Michael Weekes, Joan Wallace-Benjamin, and Rev. Gloria White-Hammond.

Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative Announces First Cohort

Guild Member Merit School of Music (Chicago, IL) is one of five community partner organizations making up the new Chicago Music Pathways Program.

From the CMPI site:

On Monday, September 16, 2019, the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative (CMPI) welcomed its inaugural class of fellows. Fifty students, representing 36 zip codes from across the greater Chicago area, gathered in Chicago High School for the Arts auditorium to learn about the mission of CMPI – to identify and develop gifted and motivated orchestral students from underrepresented backgrounds for acceptance into top-tier conservatory, college or university classical music programs in preparation for careers as professional musicians.

The freshman class was chosen from 137 applicants after completing an intensive multi-month audition process. The students range from sixth graders to high school seniors and reflect the diversity of the city of Chicago (44% African American, 40% Latinx, 10% Southeast Asian, 6% South Asian). Learn more about all the fellows at www.chicagopathways.org/fellows.

CMPI is the result of a $3.5 million grant over three-and-one-half years from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to a consortium of Chicago-area organizations dedicated to music and education.

The Importance of Arts Internships for Starting Careers in the Arts

"I had always envisioned myself becoming a musician one day, but until this summer I’d never realized I could pursue music as a vocation, as opposed to just a passion project," writes Eleasah Whittaker. "Last spring, I began searching for a summer job, preferably one that paid and, ideally, one in the arts. At the same time, I understood that the probability of finding a paid summer job in the arts, as opposed to a volunteer position, was slim-to-none."

In this post for The Hechinger Report, Eleasah Whittaker writes about their experience finding an arts internship in sound design, and the importance of programs like this one to help young artists start careers in the arts.

"All in all, I think that programs like these are vital for students like me who are interested in the arts, as there aren’t many apprenticeship-style programs out there — especially not ones for high school students. These internship opportunities allow students to immerse themselves in an actual arts profession, gain insights about business acumen as it relates to creative work, and learn more about their own interests and ways to pursue them. If nothing else, students can find clarity on whether they’d like to pursue a career in the arts at all."

Read the full article here.

Cathedral Arts Project Announces Landscape of Education in the Arts in Duval

From Guild Member Organization Cathedral Arts Project (Jacksonville, FL)

Any Given Child Jacksonville (AGC Jax), a program of the Cathedral Arts Project (CAP), is collectively leading a national effort to affect systemic change for arts education. Through a collaboration of partnerships including Ingenuity, Inc., the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a nationwide cohort of Any Given Child cities, 2020 will mark the national rollout of the artlook® Project.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and locally by PNC Bank, AGC Jax will assess the state of the arts and continue advocating for increased equity and access to high quality, arts education for all students in Duval County. According to our partners at the Kennedy Center, “numerous studies point to the value of arts education in improving student outcomes, yet the absence of comprehensive data is a challenge, and access to the arts remains an issue for many students nationally. The project goal is to help cities close the gaps for students with little to no arts access.”

In 2019, AGC Jax and Ingenuity began the first phase of this effort by developing and implementing the Landscape of Education in the Arts in Duval (LEAD) Report, a survey to assess arts education opportunities in all K-12 Duval County Public Schools (DCPS). This project is community driven, supported and implemented through collaboration among CAP, Ingenuity, DCPS, local arts organizations, funders and experts. A survey was created and tailored for all DCPS schools that was administered in May and a subsequent survey for arts partners such as museums, community centers and grantors will be deployed this fall.

“It is imperative that communities understand arts learning opportunities, the equity of their distribution across schools and what standards should be used to ensure every child benefits from a quality arts education,” said Allison Galloway-Gonzalez, CAP Chief Program Officer & AGC Jax Executive Director. “We need to continue to show that the arts add up for our community.”