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| Supporting Creative Minds |
| The Massachusetts Cultural Council and Education |
The Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) seeks to ensure that all children in our state's schools have access to high-quality, creative learning experiences. The MCC pursues this goal through a combination of grants, services, and advocacy.
Grants
The MCC works directly with 35 schools and school districts
across Massachusetts through its Creative
Schools grant program. These grants support schools,
artists, and cultural organizations that work together
to integrate arts and culture into classroom curriculum
and instruction. Holyoke Public Schools' "Connecticut
in the Classroom" project, for example, uses theater,
dance, music, visual and literary arts throughout the
curriculum to explore the local Connecticut River and
understand science practices and concepts. In Boston
the Codman Academy Charter School partners with the
Huntington Theatre to strengthen high school students'
literacy skills and self-confidence through drama.
MCC support has helped school districts leverage additional funding for creative education programs from public and private sources. Schools have also been able to use their Creative Schools projects to demonstrate the beneficial impact of arts education to local officials and legislators.
MCC's YouthReach
Initiative makes grants to cultural organizations
and other community groups to support in-depth arts
and cultural programs for young people in need. Launched
in 1994, YouthReach now supports 36 partnerships in
communities across Massachusetts. Activities take place
outside of the school, after regular school hours, in
the summer, or on weekends – in times and places where
kids are most in need of constructive activities. YouthReach
is a national model, with projects cited for excellence
by the prestigious Coming
Up Taller awards given by the U.S. President's Committee
on the Arts and Humanities.
Besides Creative Schools and YouthReach, MCC supports
arts education through its network of 329 Local
Cultural Councils (LCCs) across Massachusetts. Nearly
half of the $2 million in LCC grants benefit arts education.
An example is Provincetown Art Association and Museum’s
Youth Education Program. Museum staff work with students
in grades 2-12 to curate an art exhibition of their
work. The program helps students and teachers evaluate
and appreciate art through critical discussion, historical
research, and writing.
The related PASS Program
offers students access to arts and cultural programs
by offsetting costs for field trips. In the 2005-2006
school year, LCCs awarded more than 650 PASS grants
to support trips to Boston's Museum of Science, Peabody
Essex Museum in Salem, and Old Sturbridge Village, and
see performances at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Wheelock
Family Theatre, and other venues. These experiences
are often the first of their kind for many children,
especially those from economically depressed and rural
areas.
Lastly, MCC's Cultural Investment Portfolio program sustains many high-quality education
activities that nurture creativity. Some recipients
of these grants are themselves educational institutions,
such as the New England Conservatory and North Bennet
Street School. Others serve thousands of school children
every year – such as Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Plimoth
Plantation, and Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires.
These organizations provide extraordinary learning experiences
for young people, and many of them use MCC grants specifically
for their K-12 activities, which typically are not self-supporting.
Services
MCC strongly emphasizes the professional development
of educators in the content and practice of arts education.
Over the past two years we have worked with the National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Department
of Education (DOE) at the state and federal level to
support 10 teacher institutes in the arts in New England.
The NEA institutes provide classroom educators with
in-depth knowledge of major works of art from diverse
cultures that include Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Shahmenah
Persian Book of Kings, and signature paintings by Winslow
Homer. Explorations, the DOE-funded institute, immerses
public school teachers from Springfield and other communities
in the artistic and cultural traditions of Puerto Rico
to help them work more effectively with students of
Puerto Rican heritage.
Teaching artists also play a critical role in arts education
by serving as role models for students and teachers,
providing knowledge and skills in specific disciplines
and helping educators and administrators integrate the
arts into school curricula and culture. MCC partners
with Lesley College and others to provide training and
networking opportunities to Massachusetts teaching artists.
MCC also maintains a corps of these educators, the Creative
Teaching Partners, who have been selected by other
professionals for their expertise in the arts, sciences,
and humanities, and ability to work effectively in classrooms.
Policy and Advocacy
The MCC has always taken an active role in shaping arts education policy. MCC was integrally involved in developing the state's arts curriculum frameworks in 1999. Today, we promote state and local policies that encourage schools, districts, and communities to make deeper investments in arts education.
We work with school districts across the state to assess the strengths and potential of their arts education offerings. Using the Kennedy Center Community Arts Education Audit to engage educators, parents, and community leaders in examining their arts education resources, these districts are working with MCC to strengthen arts education in their schools.
In Springfield the Kennedy Center process led to the development of a five-year, $3.7 million plan to rebuild the district's arts programs. The plan, which was later approved by the school board, adds 61 teachers and increases investment in resources, professional development, and after-school programs. Springfield hopes that these changes will put it on par with comparable cities like Hartford and Worcester, where students have much greater access to educational opportunities in the arts.
On the state level, MCC participates on advisory committees
to the Commissioner of Education in arts and early childhood
education, and is part of the Massachusetts Afterschool
Partnership, a statewide effort to expand after-school
programs. We collaborate with the Massachusetts
Advocates for Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (MAASH)
and the National
Arts Learning Collaborative (NALC) to promote the
value of arts education. Every two years MCC presents
the prestigious Commonwealth
Award in Education to leaders and innovators in
this field. And we provide public information on the
state of the arts in Massachusetts' schools and important
current research on the effects of arts education.
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