The opportunity to witness students’ creativity, engagement, learning and joy has great impact on any observer.

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Are there great examples of Arts Education happening at your school or community site? Invite your elected official or school administrators to join you.Federal, state and local elected officials have to make difficult decisions about education, including arts education programs. 

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Here’s how you can get involved:

• Coordinate with others: interested educators, administrators, parents and community members to invite your state and local elected officials to experience arts learning at your school (or at other arts education sites). You can invite members of your school board, select board, your mayor or city council, as well as county commissioners, state representatives, state senator, executive councilor – and federal officials, too.

• Use the Toolkit: Use this step-by-step online guide for planning a visit by an elected official to a classroom or other site in your community. 

  • Organizing the visit

  • Sample invitation

  • Sample press release

  • Publicity guidelines

  • Talking points on the value of arts education

• Creating a Great Event- Activities should demonstrate the process of arts learning. Artwork exhibitions and performances are worthy public events and demonstrate the “product” of the learning. Actual classroom demonstrations will demonstrate the "process" of learning, and are equally compelling – or even more so! – to your visitors.

  • KEEP IT SIMPLE: While each of the following suggestions is a worthwhile endeavor, please keep in mind it is not necessary to create a new public event to ensure success.

  • Showcase EXISTING events and ongoing classroom activities

  • Focus on the students and their learning 

  • Organize a tour of several classrooms when arts lessons are planned. If possible, include several grade levels. 

• Involve Your School Paper/Newsletter- assign a student journalist and photographer to cover your event and write an article about the event and the importance of the arts from a student’s perspective.

• Incorporate a Statement of Belief- if you are inviting parents and community members to your event, have every visitor sign a Statement of Belief related to the importance of the arts in your school. A sample statement might include: "Our school community at [insert name of school district]  believes that every student in New Hampshire should have an education in the arts -- dance, music, theatre and the visual arts...."  Take a long piece of butcher paper, write your belief statement at the top and encourage visitors to sign. Send the scroll to your elected official along with a thank you letter after the event.

 

Our sincere thanks to the California Alliance for Arts Education for permission to adapt and use the resources. 

 

Stay in touch with the Arts Learning Network:  We want to hear about your events before, during and after. Your feedback is critical to helping us grow this statewide effort.

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