Report on the Arts Education Summit in Morgantown, WV, May 20, 2006
Summit Web Site

I had the great fortune to be invited to speak about the arts at North Allegheny at the Arts Education Summit in Morgantown, WV. What I had not anticipated was that the summit would be such a powerful and renewing professional experience. The slate of speakers was remarkable (myself excepted) with some of the most powerful voices in the field of arts in education. What was particularly remarkable and inspiring to me was the range of constituent groups represented, including business leaders, academics, government leaders, arts groups, foundation representatives along with arts educators.

Speakers represented an equally broad range of experts that, from their divergent points of view, arrived at a remarkable convergence of message; not only do work in the arts support achievement in other disciplines but more importantly education in the arts develops the creative disposition of mind, ways of perceiving and understanding, and cognitive skills that are absolutely fundamental to to personal, social and economic success in the 21st century.

As an art educator, this confirmed and validated my understanding of what we do. But as a father, a public school educator, and as a citizen the message was even more compelling, optimistic and challenging. I wish you could have been there.

Let me share with you what some of the speakers had to say. Many of the links below are audio or video interviews along with text articles.

- Jim Reinhard, Art Department Chair, North Allegheny Schools

Daniel Pink is a noted and influential business writer, who has the ear of leaders and decision makers at the highest levels of business and government. Profile http://www.danpink.com/aboutdp.php

His newest book, A Whole New Mind (Riverhead Books, 2005), is about the ascendancy of habits of mind and cognitive skills that are associated with right brain function and are cultivated particularly by learning in the arts.

His articles on business and technology have appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and other publications. He has provided analysis on dozens of television and radio broadcasts, including CNBC’s Power Lunch, ABC’s World News Tonight, NPR’s Morning Edition, and Minnesota Public Radio’s Marketplace. A free agent himself, Dan held his last real job in the White House, where he served from 1995 to 1997 as chief speech writer to Vice President Al Gore. He has also worked as an aide to United States Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich and an economic policy staffer in the United States Senate.

• An excerpt from the introduction of the book provides glimpse into his thinking http://www.danpink.com/excerptwnm.php
• His Wired Magazine article Revenge of the Right Brain states his case in brief. "Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html

Sir Ken Robinson led a national commission on creativity, education and the economy for the UK Government. His report, All Our Future: Creativity, Culture and Education (The Robinson Report) was published to huge acclaim. Profile http://www.principalvoices.com/voices/ken-robinson-bio.html

• Speech at TED Conference (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.) http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=ken_robinson&flashEnabled=1 
• Link to the report All Our Future: Creativity, Culture and Education  http://www.dfes.gov.uk/naccce/index1.shtml
• Business Week interview http://www.sfb.co.uk/cgi-bin/profile.cgi?s=65&t=5
• Ken Robinson at the London Business Forum (Windows Media 25 mins) http://jump.webstreaminghost.com/wm/sfb/lbf_ken_high.wvx
• Creativity in the Classroom, Innovation in the Workplace http://www.principalvoices.com/voices/ken-robinson-white-paper.html

Richard Deasy is the director of The Arts Education Partnership (AEP) a national coalition of arts, education, business, philanthropic and government organizations that demonstrate and promote the essential role of the arts in the learning and development of every child and in the improvement of America's schools. The AEP has published Gaining the Arts Advantage, the report commissioned by the president's Committee on the Arts that featured North Allegheny. They have also published Critical Links and Champions of Change, two studies that address the influence of the arts on academic success and school reform. http://www.aep-arts.org/Publications.htm

• NPR interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4170557
• Deasy's preface to The Third Space, a study commissioned by the US Department of Education of schools that attribute improving school performance to an infusion of the arts across their curricula. http://www.aep-arts.org/PDF%20Files/TS%20Preface.pdf More about The Third Space http://www.aep-arts.org/ThirdSpacetoolkitpage.htm

Nick Rabkin Director, Chicago Center for Arts Policy, Columbia College Chicago. In his book, Putting the Arts Back in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century (Columbia College Chicago, 2004), Nick Rabkin chronicles how pairing the arts with academics raises test scores and gets Chicago kids excited about learning.

• Article in Educational Leadership http://www.ascd.org/authors/ed_lead/el200602_rabkin.html
• Interview on Chicago Public Radio http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/DWP_XML/hb/2005_05/hb_20050508_1000_4899/segment_208464.ram

Eric Booth The Juilliard School:Graduate faculty, 1993-2001; director, Mentoring program. Author, The Everyday Work of Art (Sourcebooks, 1997; was a Book of the Month Club selection) Profile http://www.juilliard.edu/asp/fsnew/faculty_details.php?FacultyId=471&School=College&Division=Dance

• Making Worlds and Making Them Better http://www.tresser.com/Booth.htm
• Impressions from the UNESCO conference in Lisbon http://www.epictheatrectr.org/Eric%20Booth%20report.htm

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