BRIDGING: Systems Change to Improve Pedagogy, Policy, and Practice

In our campaign for 2022: Building Creative Features, we have decided to focus quarterly themes on the four inquiry-based processes emerging from our research on leadership in arts and cultural education. This campaign is forward-looking and plural in nature: we are not hoping to creatively build one singular future that will have the most benefit for us as individuals, but rather we are all employing our creativity in order to build a plurality of futures which provide a multitude of pathways for us all.

This quarter’s theme is “bridging”, and the topic where I would like to frame our discussion. (Be sure to check out the series on “unlearning” and “navigating”…and stay tuned for “holding tensions” next! Check out all posts in the 2022 Campaign here.)

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Towards an Enriched Understanding of Arts Integration

When arts integration (especially through this expanded view) is implemented by educators, artists, and institutions, extensive evidence shows - particularly in the scholarly fields of social justice youth development that youth have a deeper understanding of self, their community, and the world within which they live.

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Employing Our Adaptive Impact Plan

An adaptive impact plan is created through a deliberate planning process that addresses the reciprocity between mission and programming through the eyes of the stakeholders at every level. It combines tactical flexibility with practical mission application, and is driven by choice. The planning process is centered on the organization’s constituents and it begins with and returns to the organization’s mission, vision, and values.

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BRIDGING: Professional Identities in Arts & Cultural Education: “Arts Hybrids” as Cultural Knowledge Brokers

In a world of specialists and standardized job titles, society writ large fails to recognize that innovation is often sparked at the intersections of domains - squarely in the sweet spot where many of us in the arts & cultural education ecosystem constantly find ourselves. We are multihyphenates.

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NAVIGATING: Continue Onto Arts Route 101, The Destination Is On Your Right

Many of us are digesting the fact that two years have passed since COVID-19 altered our ways of life. Sometimes I wait for the end credits to roll for this unusual era that seems movie-like or for Ashton Kutcher to scream, “YOU GOT PUNK’D!” And if you recently saw Don’t Look Up (highly-recommend), directed by Adam McKay, you would see parallels. In my opinion, 2020 highlighted that our current systems and the people who operate within them are not alright.

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