From the Field

Museums: Leading through Crisis; Legislative Updates

The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) has published Reopenings: What Museums Learned Leading through Crisis, an in-depth series of three reports examining the impacts, long-term lessons and practices museums have adopted from handling the COVID-19 pandemic. As the legislative season continues, AAM has reported on Museums Advocacy Day with Emerging Issues in Legislation. The article outlines developing issues in state legislation that impact cultural activity and museums, such as climate legislation, LGBTQ+ rights and emergency response programs.

How to Support Artists’ Thriving at Scale

Helicon Collaborative released How to Support Artists’ Thriving at Scale, a report commissioned by Fractured Atlas, an organization dedicated to helping artists thrive. The report investigates five areas that pertain to artists’ basic needs—worker cooperatives, 1099 worker protections and benefits, access to capital, guaranteed income, and mutual aid—and provides a critical analysis of NFTs (nonfungible tokens). Many artists who earn income for their art must work multiple jobs and struggle to make ends meet, and their circumstances were drastically exacerbated by the pandemic. Currently our economic structures and social safety nets are maladapted to people working outside of “traditional” employment. There are growing movements to address these workers’ needs across many fields. The report identifies high-leverage opportunities for artists and advocates to influence systems and mechanisms that can help artists sustain themselves financially.

Reflections from a Community Diversity Project

The Olney Culture Lab: Reflections from The Olney Embrace Project white paper considers the lessons learned from an initiative in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney that aimed to celebrate its diverse identity. Community members, artists and activists were brought together through a series of conversations, performances and workshops. By fostering a sense of belonging and shared authority, the project positively impacted the community and participating artists, culminating in the development of their “common wealth” (collective sense of well-being).

Arts Education Success Stories; STEAM as an Engine for Equity

The Arts Education Partnership (AEP) actively publishes a collection of arts education success stories that highlight effective arts education programming across the United States. Over the last half-decade, AEP solicited and published short case studies across seven arts education focus areas, including restorative justice, COVID-19 responses, student achievement and educator professional development. In addition, AEP recently released P-5 STEAM Education as an Engine for Equity, a brief resource outlining the opportunity for arts integration in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) educational programming to promote more equitable outcomes among STEM students. The brief provides links to relevant resources and highlights three organizations that are currently integrating arts into science, technology, engineering and math educational activities at an early stage.

ArtScan: State Arts Ed Policy Update

The Arts Education Partnership has released its annual ArtScan update. This resource provides a detailed overview of state policy on arts education across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Department of Defense. The interactive database provides information on arts education standards, instruction, high school requirements, assessment, and other relevant policy and legislative points. A national summary is available, and you can create in-depth comparative reports as well. A top-line data point highlights that 32 states now define arts as a core or academic subject.