Last week marked the end of the fall 2012 Createquity Writing Fellowship. You wouldn’t know it from this month’s posting schedule, but Talia Gibas and Jacquelyn Strycker have been writing steadily for Createquity since last September. My autumn travels forced some extended review times for a little bit in the middle there, but Jacquie and Talia took it all in stride, sometimes working on as many as four or five articles in parallel so that we wouldn’t miss a beat. I’m deeply thankful for and admiring of their talent and professionalism. Let’s take a look back at their contributions to the site, shall we?
With a no-nonsense approach to her writing and a suitable fearlessness of going out on a limb, Talia Gibas shook down topics in arts education and beyond in search of insight close to home.
- Science Doesn’t Have All the Answers. Should We Be Worried? Maybe a little, Talia argues, as she explores several threads of controversy within the scientific community and how they potentially relate to the challenges we face in arts research.
- In Unpacking Shared Delivery of Arts Education, Talia presents a straightforward yet in-depth explanation of this complex concept that’s currently in vogue in arts education circles. The article has already made its way into workshop curricula, and is well along the path toward becoming one of Createquity’s most popular posts of all time.
- In Arts Policy Library: Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change, Talia takes on perhaps the most widely-read and influential arts research report of the past several years, and finds a good deal to quibble with. Read the condensed version to get a quick preview.
- If you really want to see Talia at her best, though, you simply must read Looking Beyond Our Borders for National Arts Education Policies. It’s no picnic at over 6,000 words, but the original research that went into this piece and the sheer breadth and ambition of its coverage place the article among the finest that Createquity has ever published, in my opinion.
Jacquelyn Strycker focused her time with Createquity on exploring the boundaries of what art can be and the interactions between institution and individual.
- Jacquie wrote Artificial Intelligence and the Arts as part of her application for the Writing Fellowship. Noting a number of recent advances in technology that enable the modeling/mimicking of creativity through computation, the article asks whether machines could ever replace the creative function of human beings.
- The sublime and ridiculous are considered alike in The Art School as Artwork, an image-rich look at a new breed of experimental arts education.
- From Palate to Palette: Can Food Be Art? explores the age-old (but newly relevant) question of whether the “arts” belong in “culinary arts.” The post is currently burning up social media and was picked up in ArtsJournal and Big Think, among others.
- In From Grassroots to Institution, Growing With Integrity, Jacquie examines the case of FIGMENT, a community-oriented public art festival in multiple cities, and contemplates what it might learn from past examples of small organizations that became big.
- Finally, Jacquie’s Arts Policy Library: Strategic National Arts Alumni Project analysis takes a tough look at an ambitious attempt to understand the lives and livelihoods of arts training program graduates. The short version gives a roadmap for the time-impaired.
Cheers to Jacquie and Talia for their hard work, and we can’t wait to see what the spring 2013 edition brings!