This report presents findings from an exploratory study on arts partnerships in Allegheny County and identifies regional facilitators and barriers to forming, implementing, and sustaining them. The authors also recommend effective strategies to expand access to arts partnerships and to strengthen existing ones.

How to Support More and Stronger Arts Education Partnerships in Allegheny County

Yael Z. Silk, Catherine H. Augustine

ResearchPublished Aug 9, 2017

Cover: How to Support More and Stronger Arts Education Partnerships in Allegheny County
Download PDF
Additional Downloads

Includes Translations

Regional arts and cultural partners can support arts education in schools by providing instruction to students in arts disciplines where teachers are not available, deepening arts learning opportunities offered in schools, and integrating the arts with other content areas. This report presents findings from an exploratory study on arts partnerships in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and identifies regional facilitators and barriers to forming, implementing, and sustaining them. The authors analyzed the extant research on arts education partnerships and interviewed more than 25 staff members from 14 organizations in Allegheny County.

The interviewees confirmed that partners from regional arts and cultural organizations and schools have engaged in and continue to build on long-term partnerships, forming shared goals and creating customized arts programs to benefit students — the acknowledged primary beneficiaries of this work. Interviewees also expressed their growing awareness of the professional learning opportunities that arts partnerships offer to both participating teachers and artists. In initiating and implementing these partnerships, schools and arts organizations strive to follow best practices from the literature.

Key Findings

Motivations for Creating Partnerships

  • Interviewees from all types of partner organizations described student benefits as a motivating factor to foster or engage in arts education partnerships, including academic reinforcement, career readiness, and social and emotional growth.
  • School and district leaders talked about the value of arts partnerships in expanding teacher practices. There was also discussion about how partnerships can have a school-level benefit when the learning inside the classroom is shared outside the classroom with the broader school community.
  • Arts partners discussed how engaging schools in partnerships provided specific benefits to their organizations, including the development of future audiences for the arts and professional development for teaching artists.

Facilitators of Regional Arts Partnerships

  • It is important to have a range of supports in place to ensure that partnerships are formed and implemented successfully.
  • Interviewees described more than 20 factors that facilitate arts partnerships in Allegheny County. The factors can be grouped into six facilitators: proximity to and diversity of cultural assets, intermediaries serving as brokers, funding, multiple champions for arts education, shared vision and goals, and collaborative effort.

Barriers to Establishing, Implementing, and Sustaining Regional Arts Partnerships

  • Barriers to establishing arts partnerships include competition with higher-priority school needs; lack of awareness of and access to information about past, current, and potential partnerships throughout Allegheny County; difficulty with gaining multilevel buy-in (e.g., principals, teachers, parents, and community leaders) for arts partnerships; and capacity constraints among school and arts organizations.
  • Barriers to implementing and sustaining regional arts partnerships include lack of funding for ongoing collaboration and for multiyear commitments, lack of time and capacity for regular check-ins, lack of transportation, inflexible schedules, and staff turnover.

Recommendations

  • Fund pilot partnerships within underserved districts or schools as a "first taste" to establish relationships.
  • Create a centralized repository to identify arts resources, match partners based on educational and partnership needs, and illuminate which arts partnerships are active in which schools.
  • Host showcase events to expose school staff, parents, and the community to the potential benefits of arts opportunities for students.
  • Support educator professional development.
  • Restructure funding opportunities.
  • Build the capacity of current programs to expand access and to help sustain them.
  • Improve the program evaluation capacity of arts partnership participants.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Silk, Yael Z. and Catherine H. Augustine, How to Support More and Stronger Arts Education Partnerships in Allegheny County. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1923.html.
BibTeX RIS

This study was sponsored by the Jack Buncher Foundation and conducted by RAND Education.

This publication is part of the RAND research report series. Research reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND research reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.