Americans for the Arts Conference:
Risk and Reward
Balancing Acts in the Arts Community
Las Vegas, June 1 -3, 2007
Courtney Boddie, Education Programs Manager, The New Victory Theater

During the flights from New York City to Atlanta, Atlanta to Las Vegas, 8 hours of travel and driving approximately 5 miles from the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport to Las Vegas Boulevard, I was thinking about the themes casinos, shopping, good food, glitz, glamour and of course, Celine Dion.  As I checked-in to The Flamingo Hotel, I was reminded that I was in America’s fastest growing city to join a national conversation about the Arts in America.

Before the conference got into full swing, I thought about how my colleagues and I became apart of this annual event. Our proposal for an Innovative Model was accepted by the conference coordinators.  To give you a little background on my organization and how we work: The New Victory Theater is a performing arts presenting house, where schools attend day time performances throughout a season (October – June). As an Education Programs Manager, my role is to supervise the In-classroom Workshop Program. This program is building partnerships with schools throughout the NYC metropolitan area, by sending a team of 2 Teaching Artists or an Education staff member and a Teaching Artist, to prepare students to see a show.  The team engages students as artists in the art form they will see on stage and return to provide opportunities for students to make their own connections to the production by further exploring the themes through the art form. The Education Staff and Teaching Artists work in collaboration to develop the curriculum for all the shows in a season, using resource materials and the artist’s experiences to give students interactive and experiential entry points for the students and teachers to access the work for themselves.  How we develop our curriculum was the basis for our presentation on at the conference.

In the fall of 2006, our teaching artist staff doubled in size from 13 to 29 based on the demand of the In-Classroom Workshop Program.  We knew that this was a delicate situation and were looking for ways to respect the returning teaching artists and the ground work they had laid, while inviting the new teaching artists in to feeling a part of this community.  Based on a summit of Education Directors, Edie Demas, Director of Education, came back with an idea of Shared Values. 

Taking Edie’s experience, we developed training sessions that spanned over the course of two days with our teaching artist community.  First the Education Staff offered 5 values that spoke to what we thought, the program tries to accomplish in the classroom.  Individuals were asked to gravitate toward the value that spoke the loudest to them.  The groups were instructed to deconstruct what this value looks like in action. Second step was to build a moving tableau or scene with a slogan for the value. Lastly, we were given an abundance of materials to create a visual component to the moving tableau for the value. Through this process, we struggled, toiled, played, laughed, discussed and essentially bonded together. By the last hour of the 5, we were left with 6 strong values with carefully crafted language structure. In the end, we decided to call them our Guiding Principles.  We used this process for the basis of our presentation at the conference.

In previous Americans for the Arts Conferences, there was an Arts Education Pre-Conference.  This year, the conference is broken out into 7 different tracks to explore the inner workings of each specific area of the arts.

Fully integrated into the conference, the Arts Education Track focused on advocacy, professional development for teachers, arts integration and education systematic changes. Sessions were based on innovative models, advanced practices, trends in the field and sessions that included all three. Other tracks were, Civic Engagement, Economic Development, Leadership, Private-Sector, Public Advocacy, and Public Art.

Even though participants had the flexibility to move from session to session within any of the tracks, I chose to remain in the Arts Education sessions. I thought it was important to get a deeper sense of the work that other organizations do in order to gain a larger perspective on my programs at The New Victory Theater. There were a total of 22 sessions offered in the Arts Education track. For those Arts educators who did attend sessions outside of the track, I believe it was an important choice as, we in the Arts Education Track and Field must have a better understanding of all sides of the arts in order to fully utilize its power in educational settings.

Having presented and attended Arts Education specific conferences, this was the first time I had presented at a conference with such a large forum of participants, who represent every sector of the arts, specifically important figures in the Arts Education field. Edie, Michael Wiggins, New Vic Teaching Artist and I presented, Teaching Artists and Shared Values: An Approach to Building a Community of Arts Educators. As we were planning for the session, we knew it would be very difficult to conflate the 5 hour experience into an hour and a half.  But it was important that we gave the participants a genuine opportunity to go through a similar process.

We offered our current Guiding Principles, and asked them to select one that spoke to them.  Those groups brainstormed what their principle looked like in action, created a short hand term for it or slogan, and built a tableau of the principle.  From a presenter’s point of view, it had been beautiful to watch my New Vic Teaching Artists struggle with, get involved in and ultimately become invested in our values.  However, to watch a room of complete strangers engage in the values the way they did could not have been predicted.  They dove right in, chewed on them, talked about them and completely got lost in the values.  The sharing was so deep that we could have stayed in that room for another 3 hours.  By the end of the session, each of those groups was their own little community that fed into a larger pool of arts educators.  The sessions and the participant’s investment truly validated that we are doing good work with our arts educator team. It also encouraged me to continue to delve into these Guiding Principles to see where else they can take the teaching staff as a collective to deepen the partnerships we are building with our schools.

We explained to the participants, that from the beginning of the fall 2006 and throughout the entire 06/07 season, we used our principles to develop our workshop lesson plans, activated the lesson plans with the whole group and then identified successes and potholes based on the principles.  Last step was to make modifications to ensure that we had successfully represented our guiding principles in each and every plan.

This idea of shared values or a common vocabulary permeated many of the conference sessions and my thoughts for the rest of the weekend. As the conference continued, the big puzzle was becoming clearer to me.

I attended Motivating the English Language Learner through Drama with Lenore Blank Kelner, Director, InterAct Story Theatre. The system expects foreign language speakers to be proficient in English within one year, when it takes 5 – 7 years to fluent in any language other than your first language.  In this session, we looked at very specific ways to integrate theater activities with literature that reinforce words, terms, sentence structure, through physical, visual, rhythmic activities. This was presented to us in a manner that was experiential and informative.  It reminded me that the value of working in a classroom where art is at the heart of the work can really reach students who are learning English. 

I also attended, Aesthetic Education in the Age of Assessment: Designing for Outcomes that Sustain our Work with Scott Noppe-Brandon, Executive Director and Jerry James, Teaching Artist, Lincoln Center Institute.  These gentlemen focused on their Capacities, which help teacher and teaching artists build student outcomes in their curriculum.  Again, I thought, it is so imperative that a group or organization of arts educators have a shared common goal and a shared vision for accomplishing that goal.

In a luncheon, Keynote Speaker, Lyn Heward, President of Creative Content for Cirque du Soleil, delivered a speech entitled, The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire that Lives Within Us All.  She spoke intensely about the company’s Doors for their creative process in building a show.  As I sat mesmerized by the video clips of absolutely amazing artistry and listened to impassioned speech, I couldn’t help but realize that this was their shared values!  Not only that, but their Doors were so incredibly close to our Guiding Principles.  We have developed a creative way of working for arts education curriculum that emulates the artistic development process for productions. This was completely mid-blowing.  I was completely inspired to continue to build on our Guiding Principles that have set us on a path of deepening the way we create together and the way we work in the classroom. 

Another highlight of the conference for me was the MetLife Foundation National Arts Forum Series: The Role of Arts Education in Lifelong Productivity.  This forum combined the Public Advocacy and Arts Education tracks to listen to an interview with Sir Ken Robinson focused on arts education and the new workforce.  His ideas were not radical or vastly different from what we’ve heard before, but it was great to hear them. In addition to being followed by a panel of respondents on the upcoming work force and arts education.  They represented Arts Education Advocates from around the country that are specifically doing work to develop a systematic change in their states. Again, looking at a common ground for why arts education should be apart of these systems.

Having been fortified by Lyn, Sir Ken and all the others, I encountered so far during this conference, I knew I had to attend the following session. Teaching Artists: Developing the Profession, with David Marshall, Education Department Manager, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Dale Davis, Executive Director, Association of Teaching Artists, Lisa Donovan, Assistant Professor and Division Director, Creative Arts in Learning, Lesley University.  We were asked to place ourselves into the future (2012) and discuss what Teaching Artists have now, then look back at 2007 and what Teaching Artists had then.  Third step was to discuss how we moved from the 2007 to the present (2012).  Lastly, did we forget anything?  During this hour and a half, my eyes were opened to a point that I discovered my long running focus is to develop the teaching artist profession to a point where no one will ever ask, “What is a teaching artist?” Essentially the session facilitators asked the group to decide on a shared common ground for what teaching artists deserve, how they should be valued, such as pay rates, insurance, job expectations, different kinds of professional development programs for teaching artists, in addition to opportunities for growth within organizational settings. I was electrified by considering how to put all of this thinking into action. 

With all of these connections happening for me: Guiding Principles, sparking the creative fires, capacities, shared values and professionalizing a profession, I must refer to a disconnect that occurred during the conference. There were plenty of opportunities built into the conference to network.  In the case of the Emerging Leaders Network, there was a social aspect to gather at a local bar to meet and greet and as well as two early morning sessions.  The Emerging Arts Educator Leaders’ meeting was separate from all the other Emerging Leaders in the Arts.  In this meeting, we were asked by the Americans for the Arts, how could they better support building our leadership skills?  I was unsure how to answer this question for several reasons: First, I felt that we were being ostracized from the larger forum rather than being fully embraced by the network.  Therefore, I was very unclear about the kind of support they have offered to the Emerging Leaders prior to this.  Another reason I was unsure how to answer this question, despite the strength of the question, this group was not able to fully explore the possibilities of the challenge. When I believe this network could provide opportunities for people like myself, who have a higher education, and 5 – 10 years of experience in the arts, to get the support we need to sustain the good work we strive to do.

However, there were approximately 25 people in the room and less than half matched the qualities of an emerging leader I spelled out earlier.  There were many Executive Directors and Education Directors, who absolutely require support from an organization like Americans for the Arts.  However, the conversation was skewed based on the demographics in the session.

I have never been posed with such a question: What can we do to better support building your leadership skills?  I would like to answer it now.  Just like we were looking at developing the teaching artist profession, we need to invest time and effort into the next generation of emerging artistic leaders.  In a field that can be demoralized, dismissed and disregarded, we must band together to say we are capable, we are real and we are in control.  The only way we can ensure that the house continues to get built on the foundation laid down by incredibly fine leaders, is by investing in the emerging leaders.  designing professional development  that share all the knowledge possible about how to grow programs, supervise staff, build communities or ensembles within an organization or within the populations the organizations work with.  I use the word invest, just like we use that word with the Federal government about our young people in this country.  If we want the arts to thrive, it will only do so, if the leaders at the forefront, take a look at who is supporting them, the assistants, the associates, the apprentices or interns, and the managers who work hard because they believe in this work and believe they have something to offer the field at large.  As a representative for all of these emerging leader, I say our challenges and successes may have different flavors, but they look the same. It is imperative that Americans for the Arts convenes all representatives from the arts in network meeting, and engages all of us to learn from each other and from our leaders.

Overall, I know now, more than ever how important it is to start from a place of common ground.  We all need to see the big picture to make connections with each other and with our constituents. My charge to myself, is seek more support as an emerging leader, to band together with others like me within New York City and throughout the nation and to focus my energy on developing the teaching artist profession.  There was no way to understand what kind of impact the American for the Arts conference 2007 would have on me, but now I am sure I am passionate, I have a voice and I am a leader.

Bio:
Courtney J. Boddie is an Education Programs Manager at The New Victory Theater.  For the last 4 years she has overseen the In-Classroom Workshop Program, supervising the Teaching Artist staff and designing professional development sessions for teachers.   She holds an M.A. in Educational Theatre from New York University.