RACC and our key partners, Young Audiences and NW Business for Culture and the Arts, are poised to launch an important planning effort, designed to benefit every K-8 student in the tri-county region. Arts Partners is about a collaborative approach for arts learning, based on a proven model of success. The vision: arts resources for every school and integration of arts and culture into every classroom.
We know that kids need the arts to develop their full potential. We know that the arts have been largely stripped from schools and that only certain schools can buy them back. We have talked for years about how to fix this problem that affects not only our kids, but also future arts audiences, a creative and innovative workforce, and a community where people thrive and which visitors flock to experience.
Arts Partners is a consortium of arts education service providers, educators, public and private funders, business and community leaders, and advocates. Using Dallas Texas's highly successful "Big Thought" as a model and benefiting from being the only region to be directly mentored this year by this program's top leadership, we are about to start exploring our own program.
Arts Partners is not designed to usurp regional school districts' responsibilities to provide arts specialists, but it can strengthen the arts as core curriculum, improve student academic performance, and provide teachers with new instructional tools. Students will have direct access to artists' residencies, performances, field trips, and master classes. Arts Partners will provide professional development to educators and to arts organizations which provide services to schools.
This program will take time to plan and develop, and initial funding for this effort has been secured from The City of Portland, Multnomah County, Clackamas County, and the Oregon Arts Commission -- thank you! RACC is serving as fiscal agent during the planning process, and is helping coordinate the first steps in exploring this big vision. You will hear much more soon, including how you can help.
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