Today’s meeting was fast and furious! We began by adopting a vision statement: “The Community Arts Team is committed to ensuring ongoing comprehensive and quality arts education for all K-8 students in the Indianapolis Public Schools. We will unite schools with the diverse cultural richness of our community to engage and inspire students to create, perform, and respond to all art forms leading to lifelong creative engagement.”  This statement (two months in development) is designed to guide the analysis and decision-making as we move forward.

Additionally, the group was presented with the data from November’s survey of arts organizations about their arts education engagement with Indianapolis Public Schools. There were 53 organizations who participated in the survey, with budgets ranging from $65,000 to $28 million. Of that total, 100% of the 45 organizations funded by the Arts Council of Indianapolis participated in the survey. This is all preliminary data, and two highlights included the fact that every IPS school has “some” level of engagement with an arts organization. Additionally, there is a huge disparity in the range of engagement. The next step is to survey the schools, and in January we will begin merging the results of all the surveys. It’s all very exciting, but there are only four meetings left and so much more to do!

Ernest Disney-Britton, Arts Council of Indianapolis, Director of Grant Services & Arts Education