Remember that presentation I was doing?

Well, yesterday I presented it at the ICFAD conference here in Sunny Sarasota.  Aside from one blustery Dean from an unnamed school, it was very well received!  There is a growing sense that the way we've been designing curricula in the the Higher Ed Arts is becoming less and less relevant, and that we've got to come up with ways to develop the following skills- This is the skill set I came up with during my research.  Here's my full presentation (You may need to download it and open it with Adobe.  Google docs is experiencing a bit of the snark tonight)

Here's the conclusion I reached:

Based on this research and recent news items, we need to turn out
artists with the following skill set:
 The ability to make their art connect with today’s adult ticket buyer
 Critical Thinking skills to evaluate how and why to make the arts relevant to today’s
culture
 Speaking Skills to articulate why they are passionate enough to dedicate their life
to their art
 Writing Skills to communicate via internet and social media to their current and
potential audiences
 The ability to communicate visually. (Museums’ attendance is up! People like ideas
communicated visually)
 Entrepreneurial skills
 Community Engagement Skills to embed art in every part of our society
 Business skills to run and/or participate in a start up Chamber Ensemble/Theatre
Company/Artist Collective/Dance Company (501c3, or hybrid other)
 The ability to translate their highly skilled art form into something an amateur can
understand and appreciate
 The ability to teach adult learners
 The ability to research and advocate for their art
 Cultural Sensitivity to understand how the arts fits into different cultures in the US

I then provided 6 curricula in undergraduate music performance to show that there WAS room for more course work and that some schools ARE doing just that: Cornish, Longy and Berklee.  Some are not.

But I got some GREAT ideas-  How can we incorporate and teach these skills in OUR CURRENT classes?  We do NOT have to reinvent the wheel, but we do have to teach our students skills that will help them thrive in the current arts environment and create the future.  We cannot continue to teach only what we WERE taught, because faculty do not want to change or because this stuff is hard.  It SHOULD be hard.  If it weren't everyone would do it.

There are some terrific solutions to this issue out there.  Cross listing courses with different schools in the university to open up arts for business majors and business for arts majors.  Some schools (UConn, Case Western) have begun partnerships with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and are having Business students produce the concerts of student led orchestras as an exercise in marketing and branding.

There is a very real sense here at this conference that we are poised as deans and Asst/Assoc deans of arts schools to do this work, that we are uniquely suited to taking this on.  I agree, but we may need some help getting out of our own way first.

Nothing kicks your butt like. . .

your own big mouth and a deadline-  Yesterday I proposed the following presentation topic to the programming chairs of the October 2010 ICFAD conference (ICFAD is NOT a Godzilla foe- "I am ICFAD! Destroyer of worlds and BFF of Megalor!  Fear me Godzilla!" rather it is the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, a great group of arts administrators who do good work).

Ahem, anyway, here's the topic-

Title: Are we preparing our student artists for the world we remember or the world that is?

Higher education exists as a paradox of both creating a future society and reflecting a current society.  Changes in the professional arts environment and how the arts are perceived, attended, and supported has implications for the curriculum being taught in our higher education arts institutions. Recent research studies and data sets from the NEA and the Americans for the Arts National Arts Index are starting to provide insight to how the US perceives and values it's art.  As the incubators of the next generation of artists, are we providing them what they need to thrive in this new world?




So the next few months I'm going to be honing in on this.  The first step is to gather curricula from established programs.  This has gotten easier as most schools post these things online, either as separate documents, or via online catalogs.  So some digging around the internet should be a good place to start.

But if you're lurking about on this blog and want to help- send me links to any schools you think I should look at-  I'm going to start with these, because I've either attended them, or worked at them (or both!)- Northwestern University's School of Music, Dept of Dance, School of Communications (theatre), Southern Methodist University's Meadows School of the Arts (Div of Dance, Music, Theatre, Studio Art), U of North Texas (School of Music), Longy School of Music, Texas A&M Commerce Dept of Music, Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts (Music and Theatre).

I think the second step is to look at the NEA's recent findings and the findings noted in the National Arts Index and identify some characteristics/skill sets/competencies that our students need and compare them to what we're teaching them. 

But that's just where I'm going to start.  I welcome suggestions from any and all.  I've heard that sometimes the comments section doesn't work, so if you are having trouble commenting, feel free to email me directly at heather.mccowen@gmail.com.  I'll update what I find here.