New Arts360 Arts Integration Grant is Now Available
New Arts Integration Grant Brings More Art into Tennessee Classrooms
From Ann Brown, Director of Arts Education —
The Tennessee Arts Commission is pleased to announce a greatly anticipated new arts education grant. The Arts360 Arts Integration (AE-AI) grant program opens with FY17 annual grants on October 15, 2015. It supports schools in implementing arts integration in every classroom throughout the whole school to improve instruction and increase student outcomes.
Arts integration is a method of teaching that supports learning both in and through the arts. Teachers of non-arts subjects work alongside artists to create collaborative lesson plans that infuse creativity into learning. Benefits of arts integration include:
- Teaches arts knowledge and skills
- Includes deep-level critical thinking, emphasizing the process of learning over the product at the end of the lesson
- Is project-based learning where students draw on lessons from several disciplines to make real-world connections and solve problems
- Often includes collaboration between classroom teachers, licensed arts educators, and teaching artists
Arts360 Arts Integration grant program goals:
- Improve the academic performance and outcomes of students
- Improve standards-based arts education for all participants
- Integrate standards-based arts education into the school curriculum
- Nurture collaboration within schools, across districts, and statewide
- Support a systematic expansion of the arts integration network in Tennessee
The AE-AI grant program will enable more schools to join the transition to whole-school arts integration that has existed in Tennessee since 2006 through two previous initiatives: Value Plus Schools and Arts360. The Value Plus Schools Initiative was a four-year whole-school integration model beginning in 2006 that developed in six schools across the state. It emphasized the impact of an arts integrated education in which dance, music, visual arts, theatre and creative writing were treated as primary pathways to learning. The Arts360 Initiative was another four-year program, starting in 2010. This initiative added four schools from Knox County to the arts integration network, creating a model of implementing the program across a school district. It brought teachers full circle as learners, collaborators, facilitators and reflectors in the arts integration process.
Arts education helps prepare students for success in school, work and life. Benefits of an arts education include increasing learning and achievement, developing critical thinking skills for a 21st century workforce and preparing students to lead meaningful lives. The Commission hopes to enable and encourage more Tennessee schools to make the transition to an arts integrated curriculum and further cultivate learning across the state.
Schools seeking to fund smaller or shorter-term artist-in-residence projects should apply to the Student Ticket Subsidy program.
Click here to see a list of all grants opening on October 15.
Photo of “Arts Across the Curriculum” painting in Covington Integrated Art Academy.
