AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

Teaching Artist Research Project

Teaching artists have been a significant force in American culture for over a century, but they have never been more significant. The best programs depend on artists at the "point of instruction" and artists are often responsible for program and curriculum design. Their work is helping transform schools and learning, improve communities, and democratize culture. At this moment of change, it is vital we understand their needs, capacities, and how to best support their work. That is the purpose of the Teaching Artist Research Project, which will study artists in a dozen communities across the country. (See the list below.) If you live or work in a study site, and you are a teaching artist or manage a program that hires teaching artists, please help by taking our survey. Register now by clicking here or by pasting this into your browser: https://uofcsurveylab.uchicago.edu/TAREG . Everyone who completes the survey will receive a free CD of powerful stories about teaching artists' work from the archives of Ira Glass' This American Life.

TARP will collect fundamental data about who does this work and where; about artists' backgrounds and the conditions of their work; about their goals as educators and artists; and about what they consider their best work. A second phase of the study will look further into the dynamics of arts education in the twelve study sites and opportunities for advancing it.

Nick Rabkin, who leads the study, is the author or Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century and was a founder of the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education(CAPE). More information from him at Rabkin-nick@norc.org.

The TARP study sites are: Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Providence, San Francisco/Alameda County, Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Santa Cruz, Salinas, and Humboldt County.

from LA Culture Net