What Cities Are Learning Through Arts Education

The landmark RAND Corporation report titled Gifts of the Muse, reached the conclusion that early arts experiences provided a gateway to future involvement in the arts and individuals who experience and learn about the arts at a young age are likelier to reap benefits associated with the arts over their entire lifetimes. The current city budget investment in those lives is well worth the price. In point of fact, that investment needs to be expanded.

The Tribunes Editorial Board, on the other hand, argues that given the capital citys budget shortfall, the axe has to fall somewhere, and arts education should be that place where the axe falls as it is not a core city service. I disagree strongly with this premise and argue that it is precisely during this global time of economic challenge that Salt Lake City needs arts learning, arts engagement, and an arts education policy. Comprehensive arts education cannot simply be an obligation for the public schools. Arts education is an important function of many great cities and it is deserving of policy coordination here in Salt Lake City. Arts education is a legacy education not some quaint frill as the Tribunes Editorial Board would have us believe.

The Tribune editorial suggests the city needs a creative solution. I agree. That creative solution, however, should not be the execution of a program that has impacted the lives of young people, many of them at risk, through three mayors and for thirteen years. The YouthCity Artways program has introduced young people to the creative process which has developed in them skills that they need to succeed in the 21st century. YouthCity Artways has also provided a safe and energized place for youth to spend out-of-school hours. My experience with children in New York City neighborhoods with gang activity, high drop-out rates, one-parent families, and, increasingly, children living with financial stress, is that young people, when engaged in the creative process, can, quite literally, create a positive future for themselves and learn how to be positive change-makers in their families and neighborhoods. How is this not a core city service?

YouthCity Artways should be expanded in such a way that it becomes a coordinated city-wide approach to arts education with its own policy making board working in close association with the Mayor and City Council. This reconfigured city government program would also take on the challenge of raising outside funds for its programs.

I remind readers that in 2002, YouthCity Artways received major funding from the cultural program of the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Winter Games, through the U.S. Department of Education. Through this grant, Salt Lake City became only the 6th city nationally to host an Imagination Celebration tied to the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Why would the city sever this important relationship with the nations premiere resource for arts education? It shouldnt.

The Mayors Office should be a place that both advocates and shepherds arts education policy coordination. Many communities including Portland, Maine, New Bedford, Massachusetts, North Bennington, Vermont, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island have implemented programs to encourage arts education and the creative economy in a broad way. And, in Hartford, Connecticut; Beacon, New York; and Colquitt, Georgia; the idea is the same the arts can contribute to the economy and its starting point is arts education. As a report by The New England Council has shown, if you looked at arts and culture as an industry in much the same way financial services is viewed, you would be able to create and leverage extraordinary opportunities for collaborations that extend well beyond what is traditionally perceived as the cultural community to include business and government. I believe opportunities abound for a realigned, policy-based Youth Artways and the time for creative collaborations is now.

Salt Lake City might benefit by focusing more on arts demand than on an arts district. As the Mayor and City Council explore the building of a downtown Broadway theatre, for example, they should pause and rethink the proposed elimination of an important arts education initiative. Only through a quality arts education lies the hope of creating future audiences for the proposed Broadway theatre and all other respected Salt Lake City arts organizations.

Arts education programs that are well conceived, affordable, and widely available would add to the vibrancy of this community and help create this communitys sense of place. Salt Lake City has the ability and resources to retool YouthCity Artways. It needs to do so by coordinating its approach so that schools, artists, teachers, and other arts providers join forces in expanding access to arts learning. Doing so would earn Salt Lake City a reputation as a center for significant arts education. It would also be a fitting and proper legacy for the capital city of the State that created the first arts council and to Alice Merrill Horne who, in 1899, admonished us to sustain the artists talents."

Respectively Submitted,
RAYMOND T. GRANT

Arts Education Is Not a Core City Function

YouthCity Artways

Only one good reason to kill it

http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_15164474

The Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City kills Artways, keeps flowers

Budget balance » Testy City Council exchanges mark end of 2011 fiscal budget session.

Artways program appears doomed

Salt Lake City » A split City Council leans toward ending the popular service.

SLC leaders look to salvage arts program

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_15160196

Parents, arts advocates hoping to save popular kids program

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700038376/Parents-arts-advocates-hoping-to-save-popular-kids-program.html?pg=2

Salt Lake official Van Turner looks for ways to save Artways

Examiner.com

YouthCity Artways program is eliminated by Salt Lake City Council