Research and Final Project Spring 2023 ItAG: Art Education Advocacy
ItAG members: Kenzie Cuvelier and Annie Busche
Our research focused on the topic of Art Education Advocacy. We wanted students, teachers, faculty, and those who are no longer in school to understand the importance and benefits of visual art education. All over the United States, schools take art programs for granted, implementing budget cuts and regarding the subject as a ‘special’ or extra. Why is it always art that is the first to go? We decided to take action and do some research about why schools were not focused on the arts. We gathered information from students, teachers and administrators currently in schools and those who were no longer in school.
We wanted to gather information and data about New York City schools specifically and used interviews and a survey to collect information. We found out that there was minimal knowledge about why the arts are an important subject in relation to other subjects. We also found studies that show how art education helps students learn the skills of patience, problem solving, critical thinking, basic motor skills, decision making, inventiveness, and risk taking – in addition to the foundation concepts of visual literacy. Our mission was to help provide a clear understanding of these benefits that art education provides to students. After discussing many forms of sharing the benefits, stickers were created to grab attention, raise awareness, and put this information in the public eye. New York City is known for sticker bombing and tagging and students, teachers, faculty, and non school attendees often put stickers on laptops and water bottles. We also decided to create a manifesto to go along with our stickers. The manifesto was inspired by our research and is another way of presenting and distributing our data.
Along with the data we’ve collected, we chose six core values that describe what we believe should be recognized:
Art/Design is Storytelling
Comfort with Ambiguity
Transdisciplinary Researchers
Idea Generators
Mind/Body/Soul
Critical Multicultural Art Education
Our manifesto represents a change in language around how art education is currently valued in schools and points to a potential shift in how we might conceptualize arts’ purpose in education. We commit to upholding these values as we further our own practices as educators. We designed our materials to serve as reminders of our beliefs and encourage the use of our manifesto to be displayed as a poster or public sign. We created a PDF that was sent out to teachers, administrations, and students via email to be downloaded, printed, and shared as a way to inspire conversation and expand knowledge about the importance of art education. We will continue to further our research and update our posters / social media platforms as necessary.
Download a PDF of the Art Advocacy Manifesto: