Build a local arts advisory committee:

Build a local arts advisory committee to develop community awareness about the importance of arts education. Include artists, arts groups, service organizations, educators, private sector supporters, manufacturers or retailers of arts-related products. Work with arts volunteers, audience members, and local arts councils. In every community , there are many people who support and benefit from the arts.

Build your case:

Know who is served by your Board of Education! Student demographics, socio-economic levels, academic, parent education levels.

Know the Board's financial resources and how they are used.

Know the local revenue-raising capacity of the community.

Have accurate figures on the number/percentage of students served by every level of the arts program at every school in your area.

Identify the number/percentages of students who will be denied art education instruction.

Identify the results of proposed cuts on the future of an arts program. (i.e. Cutting elementary music results in a 60% loss of students at the middle and high school levels.)

Identify in writing the cost of properly storing instruments, equipment, and music while the program is in "hiatus".

Identify in writing the costs of repairing, replacing instruments, equipment, and music when the program is re-instated.

Identify how the music program saves taxpayer dollars and how the music program accomplishes this more effectively than any other program? (Hint: If it doesn't save money, you need to reorganize.)

The best bargaining position occurs when arts teachers have the same or greater number of students as teachers of other subjects. (Hint: If arts teachers have less, use this information to your advantage and demonstrate how changes in the delivery of the arts program would serve more students and be cost effective.)

Understand the budget process:

Understand budget terminology.

Understand how administrators and the school board manipulate the budget process.

Cuts in the arts program may create the illusion of saving money, but do they?

Review all line items in the budget and propose plausible alternatives to cutting music.

Lobby administrators/board members who are sympathetic.

Identify the real issues underlying the proposed budget cuts.

Meet your elected representatives:

When you visit or write your legislators, make sure to have answers to the following questions at your fingertips:

Why is arts education important to you?

What impact does it have for you/your community?

What would happen if programs/funds/services were eliminated?

What are you asking your legislators to do?

State your case to local media:

Inform media about the importance of the arts to the local economy. Set up a meeting with the editorial board of your local newspaper. This can be done very effectively by joining fornces with other local arts organizations to make a joint presentation. Write letters to newspaper and magazine editors that support arts education funding and challenge stories and editorials that support cuts to the arts education programs.

Most important! Keep the message focused on the kids!

Call the local newspaper, cable channel, TV stations, etc. Prepare a headline! ("15,000 elementary students in Newtown will lose arts programming.")

Recruit parents to attend board meetings. (Make sure each of them wears a badge or black ribbon that identifies them as arts education parents.)

Select well-spoken and level-headed parents to deliver the message.

Invite elected representatitives and other key community members to events:

Invite politicians and their senior staff to your events, programs or facility. When MPPs and MPs are in their ridings, it is a good time to make sure that they experience first hand your accomplishments and successful programs. Convey to them how much government support of arts education means to you.

Invite key community members to your events or facility. Highlight your special services to the community.

Acknowledge the importance of public and private support:

Acknowledge the importance of support received from the public funders. Point out, where possible, how this upport helped to generate private funding.

Acknowledge the key role played by individual donors and corporate and small business supporters who contribute financially, provide in-kind donations, and volunteer their time to arts education programming.

The Arts, Young Children and Learning

This book provides an overview of current philosophies, theories and practices in early childhood arts education, with many engaging examples of how children learn and how adults can enhance this learning. The Arts, Young Children, and Learning presents how children learn through the arts and how adults play an important role in assisting this learning.