Resources for Effectiveness: Collaborative Arts Partnerships in Schools

INTRODUCTION Chicago, like many urban settings, offers incredible opportunities to immerse oneself in diverse cultures and traditions through art. The quantity and quality of its vast artistic choices are integral to the city’s appeal and vibrant civic life. Chicago’s rich history spans artistic disciplines including music, theater, visual art and performance, media, architecture and design. Forward thinking by several interest groups, and the feeling of possibility have helped solidify the city’s reputation as one of the world’s cultural leaders. Despite its cosmopolitan nature and openness, Chicago has always been a city of tight-knit communities with distinct boundary lines and unwritten rules of membership. Such social constraints rooted in race, gender, and class bias create challenges for a number of Chicagoans who wish to access the wealth of cultural resources in the city, since many of those resources lie outside of their neighborhoods, forcing them to turn to alternative sources. Similarly, across the nation, informal arts programs fill gaps in neighborhoods, schools, and communities where cosmopolitan culture and excess, collide with poverty, want, discrimination, and invisibility. Teaching artists provide additional exposure to the arts through programs that affirm the value of cultures that are marginalized; recognize practices that lie outside of the mainstream; and embrace those from whom traditional cultural circles choose to distance themselves. Unfortunately, the need for community-based arts programming has grown even stronger, as funding for first-line, school-based arts programs continues to diminish. When it was once unusual not to have music or art instruction included as part of the school day, an omission of both is now the norm. As educators deliberate on how to provide a well-rounded education for all, the idea of working more collaboratively with a range of arts education providers has become increasingly attractive. Allowing outside organizations and individuals to gain access to institutions in a more evenhanded way and create long-term relationships that reinforce the idea of education as a community-centered effort is a little new for schools. Yet many are finding it is worth exploring, as the process of creating alliances and partnerships with other community organizations places schools in a different light and allows them to appear less intimidating and more approachable. In the past, schools have been able to operate as self-sufficient entities, but cost cutting has forced them to focus on the “core curriculum,” and leave education that involves sports and leisure, or the arts and humanities to others. Arts organizations and teaching artists play an important role in realizing well-rounded educational strategies, and they are at the forefront of providing arts instruction in many classrooms. Now more than ever schools, teaching artists, and cultural workers must find common ground that allows them to share their practices. Through partnerships that draw on all of the resources within a geographic or cultural area, different kinds of knowledge and experience are shared, and communities are enriched by the exchange. Most would agree that this concept of partnership is feasible. When we consider what strategies are most effective in situations where issues tied to cultural representation and access in the arts reveal themselves, we are forced to re-prioritize our lines of inquiry away from process implementation and towards a re-examination of social relationships. Reflecting on this process through the case of the Multicultural Arts School provides valuable insight into how arts partnerships can contribute to building a democratic learning community in which students, teachers, cultural workers, and artists are able to redefine their roles and obtain an alternative sense of community by expanding boundaries and definitions.