Through the perspectives of a museum educator, an art educator, and an educational researcher, this article explores the evolution of shared definitions of "well-being" in the development of a museum- and arts-based program for adults with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). By piecing together the authors' first-person…

The arts have played powerful utilitarian roles for individuals and for the societies in which they live for millennia. For the last 250 years, though, "art for art's sake" -- the notion that commercial, utilitarian, moral, or didactic functions are distractions from art's ineffable, intrinsic value as an expression of the artists'…

First conducted in 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts' (NEA's) Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) serves as the longest-standing resource for studying U.S. adult levels of arts attendance, personal arts creation and performance, and arts participation through electronic media. The environment in which arts organizations…

Recognizing the unprecedented proliferation of prisons in the United States, Blackout Arts Collective (BAC), a grassroots organization working to empower communities of color through the arts, education, and activism, launched a national tour--"Lyrics on Lockdown (LOL): Slamming the Prison Industrial Complex." As a BAC member, I participated in…

The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of a most to least prompting procedure in the learning of practical leisure skills for adults with autism. The selected activity was making a basket form from clay and was carried out with two adults in the clay studio at a private center for special education for individuals with autism. A…

The background and dual evaluation approaches used in a nationwide arts evaluation project for Very Special Arts (arts programing for disabled and nondisabled children and adults) are described. Results of a field test in eight states of one of the assessment instruments developed in the evaluation are discussed. (SLD)