It can be argued that methodologies used by Urban Bush Women (UBW) came before the language used to define them. In this article, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar describes the anti-racist and community work that have been core practices at UBW before they were largely understood as fundamental to the arts, and vice versa. While UBW is highly conscious about the way they enter, build with, and exit a community, they are now turning that around to explore how they can do that within their own organization. Through experimenting with new models for creating anti-racist office culture, UBW continues to pioneer the notion of advocacy from within.

Amir Whitaker's advocacy centers the human within the artist and the urgency in providing arts education to all. This article highlights key policies in arts education both nationally and internationally that bring arts access to the forefront. Without intentional creative opportunities in the education system, students are excluded from receiving vital resources that affect their personal and professional freedoms. 

Our latest issue of Guild Notes is now available online. You can click through pages, read articles, and follow links to learn more. All members will also receive a hard copy in the mail in the coming weeks. 

In this issue, we focus on Arts and Advocacy. Read the full issue for:

• Lessons from Texas: an introduction to arts advocacy by Ann S. Graham, Executive Director, Texans for the Arts, along with interviews with arts advocacy experts from Texas. 
• An interview with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder and chief visionary partner of Urban Bush Women, about anti-racism work through the arts. 
• Interviews with youth organizers about how to center youth in advocacy work.
• Arts Education as a Fundamental, Civil, and Human Right, about Amir Whitaker's work for arts as a civil right. 

Dig in to the full issue to learn and be inspired to deepen your own arts advocacy work this year. 

This issue focuses on Creative Aging, which we define as intentional arts learning for people over 55. We talk with experts and practitioners in the field to explore: 

• How organizations have secured funding to start and sustain their creative aging programs
• Lessons learned from our Catalyzing Creative Aging Seed Grantees 
• Intergenerational arts learning with older adults and young people 

As Creative Aging continues to grow, there is another dimension that organizations are beginning to explore: intergenerational programs that invite older and younger students to learn from each other while making art together.

A workshop on intergenerational arts learning at the 2018 National Conference for Community Arts Education, led by Montgomery and Matthew Cumbie, associate artistic director of Dance Exchange in Takoma Park, Maryland, drew enthusiastic participants who were eager to find out more. “We tend to have preconceived ideas about what it means to age,” Montgomery says, “but when we learn to see things differently, the possibilities are exciting.”

As part of our Catalyzing Creative Aging program, provided in partnership with Lifetime Arts, ten organizations receive seed funding to implement new creative aging programming after receiving in-depth training and coaching. As we read over final reports sharing the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from our Fall 2018 seed grantees, we recognized how much wisdom and practical advice could be gleaned from these organizations across the country. Each seed grantee piloted a new creative aging program in Fall 2018. Sessions intentionally integrated skills-based arts learning and social engagement.

In this article, we highlight stories from five of our grantees to illuminate common themes and provide helpful tips for any organization starting or deepening a creative aging program. These excerpts were pulled from grantees’ final reports and our “Kick-Start Creative Aging at Your Organization: Lessons Learned from the Field” webinar.

As with any arts programming, one of the biggest questions for organizations starting creative aging initiatives is: how do we fund this work? We recently spoke with representatives from three Guild member organizations who shared insights and advice on how to start a creative aging program – and keep it going.

Part of our 2019 GuildNotes Issue 2.

Strategies for Developing Shared Accountability and Support

Increasingly, white people are understanding that we have a role in movements for racial justice. Simultaneously, people of color have asked for white people to not place the burden of learning on them, but rather turn to other white people for support in developing personal racial literacy. Questions remain about how to do this critical work with other white people while also being accountable to leaders of color. The National Guild for Community Arts Education’s White Advocates for Racial Equity network builds off of models across the country for its own efforts to convene white people to develop collaborative leadership, shift white dominant culture in our organizations, name how power shows up across intersectional identities, and address microaggressions among other efforts.

This webinar introduced participants to strategies for forming accountability groups for white folks who want to advance personal and professional racial equity work in partnership with colleagues and constituents of color. We also explored the reasoning behind race-specific affinity spaces and how they complement multi-racial efforts towards equity and racial justice.

The webinar included:

• Examples of different structures for organizing conversations and convenings from Austin, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Time for participants to strategize about setting up their own affinity spaces for dialogue around race and equity.
• Opportunities to share tools to help each other get started.

This particular webinar was intended to be a space specifically for people who identify as white to address our roles in racial justice.

ALAANA (African, Latinx, Arab, Asian, and Native American) members looking for resources and support can connect with the ARE Network, which often works alongside the WARE group. 

Given the lack of available training and support for teaching artists in this area, combined with increasing complexity of the learning schemes and profiles of the student population in our K-12 schools, along with the legal limitations to their access to specific information about students’ disabilities and accommodations, how can arts organizations, visiting artists, and arts educators working in and with K-12 schools effectively support students with disabilities?

In this article, Rhoda shares some general principles and teaching tips that can help you to ensure effective support for students with disabilities in your K-12 arts education partnerships.

The Guild has a fundamental, long-term commitment to supporting strong partnership between community arts educators and the K-12 learning environment. Between 2005 and 2014, our Partners in Arts Education (PIAE) program provided grants, training, and technical assistance partnership practice across the field. Since 2014, we have continued to provide in-depth arts in education learning through online programs, Conference institutes, and Guild Network activity.

In that vein, at the 2018 Conference, Mario Rossero, senior vice president of education at the Kennedy Center, presented a full-day workshop on effective K-12 partnership. In this interview, we follow-up with Mario to discuss the fundamental steps to building a thriving partnership.