The largest area of experimentation in arts education across the country these days is “arts integration.” Schools and school districts, arts organizations and individual artists, enthusiastic teachers and model schools—by the thousands—are exploring the benefits of bringing more arts experiences into classrooms in direct relation to other curricula. Music and math. Visual arts and social studies. Drama and language arts.

We human beings have a long history of proposing theories to unify disparate truths. This yearning to find a transcendent meaning for separate bodies of evidence may be one of our distinguishing traits.

The empathetic entry into the stories of others is an essential of health. That assertion may sound new age-y, but I believe it is a truth of spiritual health so real that it widely and inexorably manifests in physical health or travail.

We know a lot about the ways to spark, support and sustain the learning of students in our school residency programs. We eagerly apply all our understandings of pedagogical practices, and we carefully create a safe and stimulating learning atmosphere every time we work with students.

MusicianCorps Fellow Jeff Harms and two colleagues were singing and playing various instruments in their hour-long performance for twenty patients at a hospital’s Alzheimer's/dementia unit during the second week of the training. They played mostly old standards from the ’40s and ’50s.

Teaching artists are proudly passionate and eloquent about their work. But…are we good advocates for teaching artistry? The empirical evidence doesn’t suggest that we are. Teaching artistry remains under-funded and largely unrecognized even as it is heavily relied upon by large sectors of the arts and arts education. Of course, there are many hard realities that entrench the status of the field. However, as individuals and as a field, we haven’t succeeded in changing that standing.

Creativity has to do with genius, and you either have it or don’t have it.

COP26 has increased attention to the Code Red climate crisis. At least for the moment, and maybe long enough to create significant political movement.

Creativity has to do with genius, and you either have it or don’t have it.

Creativity has to do with genius, and you either have it or don’t have it.

There is no consensus definition of “teaching artist” in the evolving field of arts education. Five years ago, even the term would spark arguments from those who preferred the traditional labels of “visiting artist,” “resident artist,” or even “artist educator.”

To know who you are, you must know where you come from. So too for the emergent profession of teaching artistry, which might be described as a young adult—past teen years but still not moving with a twentysomething’s confident stride. This essay aspires to trace briefly the history of teaching artistry.

These six inclinations, understandings and habits of action of artists form the Six Fundamentals of Teaching Artistry. 

After an era of intense specialization of the arts, our understanding of artistry has begun in the past two decades to expand again. Development of the field of “teaching artistry” has led to artists working experientially in educational, lifelong-learning settings and expanding into health care, corrections, and non-arts professional development. Community artistry has developed “social practice,” the work of artists engaging with communities in the cocreation of participatory art for social impact.

Here are some suggestions about planning and practice for Teaching Artists to consider as they begin their work. This collection derives from asking myself the question, “What advice would I want to give to a new Teaching Artist in any artistic discipline?”

Let’s start with a few agreements.

Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, famously said that “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”