Arts Education Partnership's New Strategic Focus

For 25 years, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) has been the national hub for advancing arts education across the country. Established through a unique and abiding partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education, AEP is hosted by our colleagues at Education Commission of the States. Throughout AEP’s 25-year history, NASAA has had the pleasure and opportunity to be a partner and advisory council member. Connecting AEP’s resources to state arts agencies, and particularly to their arts education staffs and portfolios, has proved productive and rewarding for our members. Popular AEP resources continue to provide critical and comprehensive arts education policy level research. ArtsEdSearch, for example, is the nation’s hub for research on the impact of arts education. Likewise, ArtScan is the definitive database of arts education policies for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

About six months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting AEP’s new director, Jamie Kasper. With a rock-solid background in developing arts education opportunities at the state and local levels in Pennsylvania, Jamie brings to AEP keen experience and a clear drive to advance excellent arts education for all students. She hit the ground running by investing substantial time reaching out to and listening to observations and needs across the field of arts education. Armed with current intel from partners, Jamie then led AEP’s efforts to refresh its strategic mission, with an eye toward leveraging its unique ability and position to build leadership capacity for arts and education leaders across the country.

The new strategic mission states:

AEP is the nation’s hub for arts and education leaders, building their leadership capacity to support students, educators and learning environments. Through research, reports, convenings and counsel, leaders gain knowledge and insights to ensure that all learners receive an excellent arts education.

With its fresh and smartly focused strategic mission and accompanying engagement strategy in hand, AEP is strongly positioned to chart its course into the next 25 years. To learn more about its new direction, I invite you to get to know Jamie and AEP through her new blog post, AEP Focuses on Leadership Capacity, Partnerships to Inform Arts Ed Policy, marking this exciting moment in time for arts education policy and development.