How the arts can unlocka closed curriculum

The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced educational inequities that pose unprecedented challenges for teaching and learning. Scott Sikkema, Jenny Lee, and Joseph Spilberg of Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) and Maggie Dahn, Nickolina Yankova, and Kylie Peppler of the University of California, Irvine, explain how the arts, which are often relegated to the margins of the curriculum, can help transform disruptions like those brought about by the shift to distance learning into unique opportunities to create more open and equitable learning models. They describe how CAPE’s open and inquiry-oriented approach to arts-based pedagogy enabled them to rethink teaching and learning in ways that changed the relationship between teachers and students and gave students more ownership of their learning.

Arts Partnerships Are Bridging Disparities

Government, non-profit and industry partnerships are giving disadvantaged youth access to successful careers in the Arts. Although the trend has been toward an ever growing “opportunity gap” between children from low socio-economic communities and their wealthier peers, cross-sector arts education partnerships are bridging disparities in access to the creative professions. Currently, the lack of opportunity for young people from poverty disproportionately affects their career prospects in the Arts, where consistent exposure to the tools and techniques of the creative disciplines is necessary in order to guide students toward college and/or careers in these growing fields. Despite a burgeoning creative economy, remarkably little progress has been made to diversify the workforce in this sector. Collectively, we've underestimated how creating opportunities for young people is economically valuable to government, non-profit and industry. A fundamentally different framework is needed that puts a proper valuation on the future of our youth.

Issues of Global and Local Quality in Arts Education

Quality is not a random occurrence in arts and creativity partnerships. The achievement of quality must be planned. Any arts partnership requires both quality assurance and quality control components. Quality assurance manages quality of processes, while quality control measures deliverables - ‘products’ - against standards. This paper looks at quality from a global and local perspective and argues that arts experiences from children and young people need to be: • "Fit for purpose": i.e. The arts education experience should be suitable and relevant for the intended purpose and the intended participants/audience. • "Right first time": i.e. There are certain sets of attributes that are generally associated with quality arts engagement and arts partnerships within education and these can become ‘prerequisites’ for a programme, there by mistakes should be eliminated, or at least reduced. This paper outlines the key components of quality arts education and suggests that the focus of research needs to move forward from a impact of the arts to quality of the arts.