SOLICITED PROPOSAL

Solicited proposal



Solicited proposal

Program Description

Community Development through the Arts is a Mays Conservatory of the Arts initiative that provides small to mid-size Texas communities with quality arts programming, in-school arts education residencies and professional development for arts organizations and presenters. Through this program, the organization name will provide the community(s) of name of community(s) with the following services: A public, family performance of Mays Conservatory:

• Two days of in-school educational residencies

• Docent (public-speaking) training for area schoolteachers and community members to help them prepare their students and the community for the family performance

• Professional development training for community members______ in the areas of marketing and advertising, fundraising, special events, public relations, box office management and outreach programs community with quality arts programming and to utilize the experience of the Mays Conservatory of the Arts staff to ensure that the presentation of the events will be successful. Skills gained from the professional development are transferable and will allow the organization name to plan and implement a comprehensive series of future arts events in our community (Smith, 2006).

Arts Education for Craftsmanship

Wolf (1992) explains that early art educators tended toward efficiency methods used in industry and priority curriculum areas such as reading and mathematics. Early art textbooks were dominated by elements of design, routine exercises, and a skills-based sequence of activities. When Walter Smith became Massachusetts' art director, his program focused on “drawing skills useful to industry” and “practicing isolated elements of design [curves and designs present in fabric, ornaments, and wallpaper] repetitively until they achieved a machinelike dependability”. According to Wolf, this curriculum provided students drawing tools to become skilled workers and to enhance their social status above what might have been predicted, without much personal expression or creativity.

Arts Education for Creativity and Self-Discovery

As the 20th century began, arts education reflected such social interests as evolution theory, psychoanalysis, industrial reform, as well as new artistic directions such as romanticism, cubism, and the arts and crafts movement— forms linked to individual imagination, spontaneity, and expression. Arts education became “a safeguard against the routine, the regular, and the predictable, something like an occasion, or a medium, for the development of creativity” (Tanner, 2000). Now students were seen as free-spirited artists, discoverers, and natural inventors of self-expression—not students to be taught to draw and copy. Cultural changes and progressive education, derived in part from child-centered practices, led art educators to argue that the arts played a unique role in the curriculum—contributing to personality development and the creativity needed to become effective citizens. During this time, art teachers evolved from mentors of drawing skills to facilitators who provided the studio, materials, and occasions for various projects.

Arts Education for Developing Symbols and Thinking

Uneven results from progressive education, cultural shifts from behaviorism and romanticism, reaction to Russia's Sputnik success, and research that documented major patterns of language acquisition and cognitive and moral development led the view of arts education to shift from creativity and individualistic expression to a view of the arts as “earned conceptual ...