The Art of Collaboration: Promising Practices for Integrating the Arts and School Reform. AEP Research and Policy Brief

In June 2007, the Arts Education Partnership (AEP) convened the directors of eight collaborative entities to discuss promising practices for integrating the arts into the lives and curricula of urban public schools as a means of fostering system-wide educational improvement. The seven school-community collaboratives and one higher education collaborative represented at the one-day seminar at Oklahoma City University were selected based on their participation in The Ford Foundation's "Integrating the Arts and Education Reform (Arts-Ed) Initiative". Each collaborative is partially supported, and in some cases was initiated, by grants from The Ford Foundation. This research and policy brief describes some of the strategies discussed during the directors' roundtable discussion. At the seminar, as the directors talked candidly about challenges and opportunities they face in managing their organizations during this start-up phase of the initiative, a general consensus emerged about particular approaches and practices that may be helpful to others in the field. The purpose of this brief is to share these ideas with a broader audience of those engaged and interested in using community-based arts education collaboration as an agent for system change. Profiles of the Collaboratives Participating in the Integrating the Arts and Education Reform Initiative are appended. (Contains 1 footnote.)