Denver

Professional Development Institute

For more than 20 years, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) have supported a Professional Development Institute (PDI) for state arts agency arts education managers. The state arts agency in Maine is the Maine Arts Commission. And the education manager position is the one I am in now.  The PDI provides meaningful leadership development and technical assistance. This year’s session marks the first joint PDI with the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). This organization members are the arts education designee at the Department of Education’s across the country. The position at the Maine Department of Education, Visual and Performing Arts Specialist is part of SEADAE (the position that I held for 7 years.

This opportunity to come together jointly as state agencies and partners brings value and adds capacity to state work. I am grateful to SEADAE for the opportunity to learn from my colleagues in each state over the last 7 years. These three days in Denver are providing me a chance to get up in my helicopter and learn what both of these organizations bring to the arts education environment in this country.

The Denver agenda includes:

• Keynote from Ayanna Hudson, Director of Arts Education, National Endowment for the Arts on Collective Impact. Readings on the topic:  “Collective Impact” written by John Kania and Mark Kramer, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011
  “Disseminating Orphan Innovations”, written by Susan H. Evans and Peter Clark
  Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011
• Performance by El Mariachi Juvenil de Bryant Webster, the first elementary mariachi group in the Denver public school system. 250 students have participated since it started in 2004.
• Performance by Wonderbound, a dance group whose centers around: collaboration, community, creation. 11 young dancers make up the professional group.
• An artmaking session lead by Talya Dornbush at the Center for Visual Art that was based on steps of communication that provided food for thought without knowing the entire directions.
• Panel presentation on “collective impact, including Christie Lynch Ebert from the NC Department of Instruction, Anu Valladares, Arts in Ed Director, NC Arts Council, and John Epps, District Arts Coordinator, Denver Public Schools, Cherity Koepke, Director of Education and Community Engagement, Opera CO Young Artists and Diana Green, Arts in Ed program manager, AL State Council on the Arts.

• Presentation on the National Core Arts Standards provided by Lynn Tuttle, Director of Arts Ed, AZ Department of Ed.
• The First Lady of Denver, Mary Louise Lee, who broke out into a song before she spoke to the group. She has an initiative committing to quality arts ed programs for all kids.
• Presentation by Sandra Ruppert, Director of Arts Education Partnership (AEP) on supporting arts education with public policy.

The Denver hospitality has been amazing and the time and details allowed to plan the PDI has been amazing.