Search Results

Quality education depends on quality teaching. Today, arts specialists face more demanding conditions: a transcultural curriculum, increasing competition from other academic areas for finite school time and limited resources, and skepticism about the educational value of the arts among some educators, administrators, school-board members, and parents. If they are going to serve as cultural coordinators, organize comprehensive programs, incorporate community arts resources, apply the potential of today's technology, develop curricula to meet new graduation requirements, supervise arts programs taught by classroom teachers, and provide teachers with instruction and direct advocacy efforts to win broader support, these new and expanded responsibilities will require extensive changes in their preservice education. Like every other subject in the public school curriculum, the demands of teaching and learning in the arts are growing.

This introductory chapter analyzes the institutional and organizational factors that led to the invention of “the arts” in America. Wealthy reputational entrepreneurs seeking to establish domestic arts organizations contributed to the birth of highbrow arts as both idea and organizational practice. This first wave established the pathway by which creative forms came to be seen as art. As new orchestras, art museums, and symphonies were formed, advocates for ballet, modern dance, theater, and opera employed the same process to generate legitimacy. This second wave of legitimation was initiated by new groups of reputational entrepreneurs, including wealthy women, Jews, immigrants, and intellectuals. They advocated for the creation of novel American artworks to reflect the diverse character of the nation. The chapter then joins together existing sociological research on these two waves of change with research on the teaching professions that trained protoartists, the nonprofit professionals who administered arts programs, and the funders who supported their development.

This chapter discusses the broadcasting contexts where Beckett's television plays were made and shown. It examines some archival sources, which places the scheduling and promotional contexts of the plays in comparison with and in contrast to other television drama forms. It shows that Beckett's dramas for British television were screened in arts programming slots on BBC2, instead of the customary scheduling positions and drama series of the time. It also mentions BBC radio, which was committed to broadcasting original experimental drama in the Third Programme (now known as Radio 3), including Beckett's radio plays. This chapter also shows that his plays work both with and against television cultures, and draw attention to their distinctiveness.

Research commissioned by Ofcom categorises arts television as a genre ‘at risk’ of disappearing as relatively small audiences are unable to offset increased production costs. A decline is also evident in Ofcom's own research which finds that in the five years to 2011, spending on arts programming by the five main terrestrial broadcasters fell by 39 per cent. This decline is the confluence of a number of factors. Decreases in commissioning and production budgets mean fewer resources for producers. Within specialist factual genres such as arts, this can have a limiting effect on the coverage of the subject, access to expertise, and the aesthetics of the final programme. Without a deliberate strategy to save it, the downward trajectory of arts content on British public service broadcasting is unlikely to be reversed.

This chapter examines the PDIA-funded work that emerged from the arts and humanities program. It considers activities exploring the meaning of death that were supported from generic grants and through a number of other special initiatives. It presents examples of community engagement projects, artistic endeavors, and some research studies. These activities demonstrate how PDIA gave expression to a range of work that allowed for the elucidation of meanings relating to death, dying, and bereavement in modern America—and in turn how it provided a framework for thinking about the configuration of end-of-life care services.

This chapter discusses whose culture and arts should be taught. In 1977 the Rockefeller panel report Coming to Our Senses: The Significance of the Arts for American Education defined American culture as “a quilted fabric with numerous national minorities interspersed”. The panel viewed the artistic creations of our ethnic peoples as “the most visible expressions of this variegated culture”, and they saw these creations as “an invaluable resource for arts education”. The ethnic arts movement, they stated, is “a central force in American culture”, and they urged the schools to “take advantage of such programs to improve their own arts education efforts”. The panel expressed reservations, however, about the possible imitations of arts programs designed for those with the same social or economic conditions. Such programs put blinders on children and teach them to look at only their own footsteps. We must be careful not to move toward cultural separatism, particularly in our cities.

This chapter describes the status of the Underground Musicians and Artists Association (UGMAA) and Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (PAPA) during the 1980s. It explains that the 1980s were an especially difficult time for many residents of South Central Los Angeles and African Americans were three times more likely than whites to fall below the poverty line. The effect of the UGMAA and the Arkestra were the loss of Construction Education and Training Authority (CETA) funding, the Shop, nonprofit status, and the Immanuel United Church of Christ (IUCC). The economic devastation and elimination of arts and music programs within the schools and throughout the city also curtailed the Arkestra's audience and potential recruits.

This chapter draws together four concepts — resilience and flourishing, creativity and play — to explore the impact of poetry interventions in the lives of people with dementia living in a care facility. Participatory arts programmes can provide opportunities for people to be reminded of their humanness and re-membered as valuable human beings. Opportunities to be creative and engage with others contribute to resilience or the ability to transcend many dementia-associated losses. Through imaginative play, regardless of cognitive ability, people can express and/or enact important aspects of meaning and selfhood/personhood that might otherwise go unacknowledged in the care environment. While arts interventions may not be able to reverse cognitive decline, the case study points to ways that the poetry intervention creates a time–space in which people can ‘flourish’, express affinity with others, and foster social bonds, and how, in turn, these contribute to meaningful moments in people's lives.

The motivations of artists are traditionally considered primarily through the lens of their own desires for self-expression. This common perception is actually a product of romanticism, and it fails to give full attention to the variety of factors that motivate the creation and performance of art. The language of vocation offers an alternative to accounts that focus exclusively on self-expression, encouraging students to think about how their artistic energies can be shaped in ways that are faithful to, and in the service of, their audiences. Instead of creating and performing art for the purpose of eliciting strong emotional responses, artists can think in more focused ways about the meaning and context of their art-making, and consider the degree to which it functions as a response to the material order. An approach focused on vocation can liberate artists, as well as their audiences.