Author Jennifer Bergmark describes an art project with the purpose of providing a collaborative creative experience to break down school-community barriers and provide a space for conversation and community building. A goal for the school where this project took place, Stratton Academy of the Arts, located in Champaign, Illinois, is to create a…

In this article, Miguel Aguilar describes the process of mental preparation he performs before beginning a new graffiti mural. This may include reviewing recent sketches and his lists of color palettes. Aguilar mind maps ideas he wants to connect, thinking about intentions or the goal he wants to accomplish. Aguilar further states "this…

In this essay, author Steven Ciampaglia reflects on the creation of a guerilla art course he and a colleague designed to engage students in the process of creating contemporary art relevant to them outside the traditional classroom setting. He examines how reflecting on his teaching practices led him to rethink the key objectives and design…

In 2011, the author made the transition from teaching assistant to teaching artist. From 2007 to 2011 she was an assistant teacher at Marwen, an organization that provides free art classes for middle and high school students in the Chicago area. It was there that she began to realize how much she enjoyed helping people as a teacher, whether…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

This article is a brief synopsis of a much longer report, "Teaching Artists and the Future of Education: A Report on the Teaching Artist Research Project," which is available in full at http://www.norc.org. The Project, for which I was the principal investigator, was a three-year investigation of the world of teaching artists in a dozen…

The United States has a long proud history of innovation and creativity. This is one of its greatest assets and what will give its workforce an edge in an increasingly competitive global economy. But to do this, individuals need to prepare the next generation of inventors, designers and creators. Arts education is a solution to many of these…

Pilsen Art Pilsen Artist Pilsen is a qualitative study utilizing archival research, autobiographical writing, oral history, and participant profiles to examine historical phenomena. The study explains the immigration patterns of Mexican Americans in Chicago while also discussing the art and cultural institutions that this group developed. This…

This article places youth spoken word (YSW) poetry programming within the larger framework of arts education. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews with teen poets and adult teaching artists and program administrators, the article identifies specific benefits that participants ascribe to youth spoken word, including the development of…

A remarkably consistent picture of the value of the arts in a comprehensive Pre-K-grade 12 education emerges from a review of two decades of theory and policy recommendations about arts education. Over the past decade, the National Governors Association, the Education Commission of the States, the National Association of State Boards of Education,…

The author has been a theater artist in Chicago and Elgin public schools for over 10 years, and for the last four she has been leading professional development workshops for teaching artists and classroom teachers both in the United States and abroad. Teachers all over the world have asked her the same questions: "How do you get new teachers…

Mentorship is essential to teaching artists seriously committed to "learning to love this work more." For new(er) teaching artists, with little or no experience as teachers, the New Teaching Artist Mentorship Initiative is designed to inspire a life-long love affair with teaching and learning. This article describes the New Teaching…

In 2005, Maria Acaso, professor in Art Education at the Universidad Complutense Madrid in Spain and a co-author of this article, conducted a comparative research project on visual configurations at different art schools in Europe and the United States. The study of hidden visual curriculum examines how knowledge and cultural/political/social…

It is generally known that professional development for Teaching Artists varies widely. Offerings range from the most basic of orientations to a sponsoring organization's procedures and expectations, to more sustained experiences that may address school culture, principles of youth development, models of arts education, learning standards,…

The mission of this article is to introduce just a few of the organizations that are expanding the teaching artist field by addressing the artistic, educational, and business needs of today's TA head on. For some organizations, supporting TAs is a facet of what they do; for others, it is all they do. Staying true to their creative nature, each…