Arts Advocacy is Like Getting a Vaccine

TRIPLE A: Arts, Advocacy, Action

What does the world look like without arts education?

Most people claim to support arts education – especially in the educational system - and yet, it is often the first item up for elimination in the curriculum when we face budget cuts. Many administrators, believing after school programs and arts enrichment through short, un-sustained arts engagements, are meeting what students need to be ready to enter the creative workforce with adequate 21st century skills. We all know this is most certainly not enough – especially since the arts and entertainment industry is the third largest economy in California.

As we passionately support our students within the confines of our own classrooms, we blindly rely on others to advocate for our cause on the grander scale. We are so busy, don’t have an interest in the political aspects of education, feel like we don’t know enough or that someone else will do it better, so we trust others to do this work and don’t take action.

Advocacy works on the same principle as vaccines. Vaccines only work when everyone does their part. One individual vaccination does nothing to stop a disease, even if that person is the most powerful, influential person in the world. The true power in vaccines lies in numbers; with each person doing a small part to build herd immunity. Advocacy is exactly the same. A few powerful, vocal leaders are nothing without a large group of people taking a few minutes from their day to participate in advocacy in some way.

When we are supported by an overwhelming number of advocates, our profession can be an incredible force; but, when people start to opt out — because we believe we don’t know enough about the issues, don’t have enough time or money or think someone else is better qualified — then the beneficial protections start to dissipate. Advocacy is critical to the health of our profession.

The burden lies equally on us all — from the first-year teacher to the most senior professor emeritus — to be an advocate. 

Advocacy is action – doing something to champion, promote, support, and endorse arts education. The word advocate is derived from the Latin vox, meaning “voice,” as in voicing support for something, or someone who is the figurative voice for a cause.

 Becoming a member of an arts professional organization is a powerful action first step. Tapping into our organization helps us hone our advocacy skills from the classroom, to the district, to the county, to the state, to the nation. It’s not enough to be an artist in the world anymore – you have to self-advocate to be visible in the art world. Our membership in a professional organization is our self-advocacy as a profession. Our service in our organization heightens the importance of the arts in education and gives us power and the tools to keep the arts alive in education – despite the financial climate.  It’s our united voice that can’t be overlooked in the educational landscape. Our students need you to act on their behalf for their future and model for them what they need to do for themselves.

START AN ARTS REVOLUTION

Collective leadership helps us all move arts education to the next level


Artists have always been leaders and forerunners of new movements. In the 20th century, the Fauves led a shift in how we see the world. For the first time, color did not serve as a mirror of objectivity, but expressed departure from norms, causing the viewer to see things differently.

Similarly, Cubism, the avant-garde art style that led to an artistic revolution in the early 20th century, does not present an object from just one perspective but sees it from all angles simultaneously. At the time, the artistic approach was revolutionary, and the world hasn’t been the same since.
There are countless ways artists have led the way fearlessly to change. This can happen in our classrooms, districts, state, and on a national level. Leadership takes on many forms. As our artist predecessors, we are trying to create a movement - new creative approaches to common things and things that don’t yet exist. One of the most important ways to lead as artists and educators is through advocacy.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

"Woman With A Hat"
Henri Matisse, Leader in the Fauve Movement

• We can lead our colleagues both in
the arts and from other disciplines,
to see arts education differently.
• We can lead students to be agents of
change through their work as artists.
• We can model this through our own
risk-taking and assumption of leadership
roles.
HOW CAN YOU DO IT?
• Lead a school-wide initiative
around the arts, maybe it’s a
school-wide effort and you’re at the
helm.
• Assume a leadership role
in your arts professional organization or
lend a leadership voice at your local
arts council meeting.
•Lead students into community
engagement that changes
how we see issues and society
through social artistry.
• Start a chapter of
the version of  A National Arts Honor Society at
your school, and begin cultivating
the next generation of leaders.


Leaders bring people together around new ideas and start conversations. Leadership starts with stepping into an arena that puts us a little out of our comfort zone. It doesn’t have to be
big. It’s a metaphorical shift through small, incremental experimental steps like painting portraits with arbitrary colors. Leadership is listening, identifying patterns, and finding ways to
meet needs and improve systems, organizations, and human experiences. Research shows that students engaged in art tend to be more civic minded. As artists, we can observe the human condition and think critically about how to present it and offer new ways of seeing everyday things.

We need the mindset of leadership in our work as educators, not as a way of
taking on one more thing that makes us feel overwhelmed, but as a means
of more effectively unifying forces that collectively distribute the workload and, ultimately, make things easier. We need leadership to offer us a new way of seeing things to push us to the next level, even after achieving success. If we stay comfortable and status quo,we won’t find that next avantgarde movement that pushes us to stay up with the shifts in the global creative workforce.It takes creativity and tenacity to be a leader. That’s who we are as artists. And, that’s what we bring to our role as arts educators. What’s your next step in leadership? Who and how will you engage in paving the way to the next revolutionary innovation? As anew year begins, I encourage you to reflect on what your next steps are to grow as a leader in arts education.