NYC Blueprint for the Arts
by Scott Noppe-Brandon
It gives me great pleasure
to witness the impending “birth” of
the NYC Department of Education’s new Blueprint for Teaching
and Learning in the Arts. We all owe a debt of gratitude to
DOE’s Sharon Dunn, Senior Instructional Manager for Arts
Education, Nancy Shankman, Director of Music, and Barbara Gurr,
Director of Visual Arts; Tom Cabaniss, Director of Education
at the New York Philharmonic; and Tom Cahill, Executive Director
of Studio In A School, for the excellent leadership that brought
the Blueprint to a successful completion. The purpose of the
document is to support an arts plan for all NYC schools in
which arts specialists are key players, the school community
is actively involved, and the unique collaboration between
the schools and the New York City cultural community is used
to its full potential. By recognizing that potential, the Department
of Education honors this relationship as part of a new educational
paradigm, one based on a public/private partnership.
Why do I think of this as a new paradigm? It certainly
could be claimed that the schools have always worked in partnership
with NYC arts organizations. In fact, much of the education
in the arts presented to NYC students since the mid-70s has
been provided by the many NYC arts organizations. The difference
is that the arts community only served as vendors to the NYC
schools. There was no systemic structure that brought all of
us together. This time, the DOE and the arts community worked
together: the creation of the Blueprint is a result of a true
partnership. My voice was heard both as a reviewer and consultant
to the development of this document. In the Blueprint we finally
have a document that requires, hopefully mandates, that we
relegate the vendor-based relationship to the past.
This does of course
raise the question of what an authentic partnership between
the DOE and the arts community should be like, both in design
and implementation. Today, there are over 240 organizations
in New York City presenting arts-based instruction to students,
at every grade level, in the city’s
schools. Yet the only citywide quality control mechanism that
exists is the contractual process, which once again, treats
the arts organizations as vendors, not partners. No formal
process exists that speaks to creating a partnership, such
as represented by the Blueprint, between the DOE and the approved
organizations.
To be fair, it would be extremely difficult, politically
and educationally, for the DOE to establish a process through
which certain organizations become partners and certain organizations
remain as vendors. In the face of that difficulty, I hold the
Blueprint to the promise of using the NYC arts community to
its full potential: long-term partnerships must be established
between arts organizations and the DOE that will represent
a systemic change in their relationship. Only in partnership
can we work successfully toward ensuring that the arts are
valued as a vital component of the overall educational goals
of every school, for every child.#
Scott Noppe-Brandon is the Executive Director
of the Lincoln Center Institute.
