How the Arts Can Help (continued)

Keeping Kids Safe: Just like belonging to a sports team, the student government, or a school club, the arts keep young people safe and off the streets by providing them with mentors, activities, and safe places to learn and grow. The arts often keep children busy after school and on the weekends, because rehearsals, performances, and exhibitions require a time commitment and dedication. This is especially important for "at risk" youth -- for children lacking strong adult or familial relationships at home, for children living in high-crime neighborhoods, for children surrounded by the temptation of drugs and alcohol. Whereas some young people might join gangs or remain in abusive relationships in an attempt to achieve a sense of belonging, arts programs offer an alternative. Playing in an orchestra or being a cast member in the school's play allows a child to create healthier friendships, "families," and networks of support. The arts offer young people belonging and acceptance while simultaneously encouraging and supporting their uniqueness. Painting, writing, singing, dancing, and playing an instrument are outlets for personal self-expression. Through these activities, students who participate in arts programs are taught that their voices matter and are given constructive, positive ways to assert themselves in lieu of succumbing to negative influences and peer pressures. Furthermore, studies from The YouthARTS Development Project (a collaboration of Americans for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Justice) demonstrate that arts-involved students are more likely to attend school, do their work, and have faith in their abilities due to the sense of achievement, self-worth, and commitment they learn through practicing their art form.

Workplace and Professional Preparation: An arts-enriched education helps students develop the skills and qualities they will need to succeed professionally in whatever career path they choose, because the arts teach our children critical, analytical, and abstract thinking skills, problem solving skills, compassion for others, commitment and responsibility, and how to function as both a leader and a member of a team. Office managers, politicians, advertisers, business entrepreneurs, teachers, doctors, journalists, grant-writers, scientific researchers, accountants, lawyers, and therapists alike need to learn how to form an effective argument, analyze data, interpret evidence, mediate inter-personal conflicts, empathize, lead, and cooperate, all of which are skills that are acutely tuned through arts involvement. Moreover, as we have witnessed the workplace undergo much change, we know now that "the ability to generate ideas, to bring ideas to life and to communicate them is what matters."²

Creating a More Active Citizenry: Through the arts, students are asked to look at, explore, and consider the world in which they live. Then they are asked to celebrate, question, criticize, and respond to that world. The arts thus empower young people by giving them a voice. Through dance, music, visual art, film, and theatre, young people can explore identity, relationships, human suffering, politics, spirituality, and history. The arts require students to consider themselves as members of a larger collective and to embrace both their own uniqueness as well as that which they share with others. This type of work nurtures compassion and empathy while encouraging a sense of social responsibility. Today's young artists will become tomorrow's active citizens, tomorrow's volunteers, mediators, community leaders, voters, and facilitators of change.

Developing an Audience for the Arts: Because all artists share the same goals and a common language, through studying the arts, students gain a stronger appreciation for not only their particular art form but for others as well. Actors do not use paintbrushes or pianos. Their bodies and voices are their only tools and instruments. However, it is this love of words and movement and storytelling that teaches acting students an appreciation for other art forms. Students of the theatre will become consumers of dance, literature, visual art, and music as well, drawn to these other art forms because they too use sound and movement in their own unique ways to tell stories and explore the human condition. A visual artist who has studied photography will feel an affinity towards film and its moving images; a sculptor might become a regular supporter of dance, drawn to the human body's physical form and expression. Musicians, dancers, visual artists, actors, and writers often find themselves in dialogue and collaboration with each other. In this way, arts programs not only create our future artists, but they also create our arts' future audiences, patrons, and consumers.

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Footnotes:

1. Frankenberg, Erika & Lee, Chungmei & Orfield, Gary, A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream? Harvard University: The Civil Rights Project, 2003.
   
2. Fisk, Edward B., Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning. The Arts Education Partnership with the The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, 1999.