As a program that began with a few young musicians playing classical music in a garage in Venezuela in the 1970s, the phenomenon of youth orchestras known as “El Sistema” has captured the hearts and imaginations of renowned artists and arts organizations around the world. Today, over fifty organizations in the US self-identify as “El Sistema-inspired,” presumably because they have some combination of rigorous musical study, a social justice mission, or a community development mission. As these music for social action programs emerge and evolve, they are grappling with questions about how to collectively support this new movement, what informs this type of work in our communities, and what this new hybrid leader of advocate, educator, administrator, and musician looks like.

Organizations around the country are exploring partnerships as a way to achieve greater impact than they alone can accomplish. Bard College and The Longy School of Music saw a need to support musicians in well-rounded careers as extraordinary musicians with strong teaching skills, and recently announced that the two schools are in the process of merging. The Los Angeles Philharmonic saw a need to supply El Sistema programs with high-quality teachers, and has partnered with Longy and Bard to train teachers and host conferences that bring together leaders in the El Sistema movement to discuss the needs of emerging programs. The New England Conservatory continues to support 10 people each year in a rigorous program (Abreu Fellows) that prepares them to start and/or support El Sistema programs in the US.

As a current Abreu Fellow, I’m seeing this connectivity in the spirit of El Sistema first-hand. In September, the Fellows joined about 35 music teachers and El Sistema program leaders from around the country in a professional development workshop called “Enacting a Teaching Practice through El Sistema Philosophy,” a joint initiative of New England Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, and the Conservatory Lab Charter School (CLCS) in Boston, where first-year Abreu Fellows Rebecca Levi and David Malek direct an El Sistema program. This was not your garden-variety conference: we embodied the learning by making music together, singing with the children’s choir at CLCS, playing in the children’s orchestra, and learning how to play in a bucket band. By the end of the workshop, many of us felt so connected that we ended the evening harmonizing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” outside of a restaurant.

Cross-pollination from different fields is happening institutionally, as well. When Harvard University hosted a session at the Kennedy School for Public Policy with El Sistema leaders in the US to discuss possible implications of El Sistema-inspired programs on policy, the Abreu Fellows turned the group of 40 public policy grads and arts education leaders into a choir. This is the change that is happening through the inspiration of El Sistema: creative entryways into experiencing excellence, community-building, performance, and most importantly, fun.

As Doug Borwick says, “As more established arts institutions come to understand the need to establish community relevance as part of their long-term prosperity (or survival) the more necessary it will be to develop models of work with communities that produce impressive results.” The good news is, we’re just at the beginning, and the conversations and rich connections are well on their way to making relevant music for community development programs a reality. Through these connections, we’re establishing an infrastructure for the next step: gathering information to better understand the impact that these programs can have.

• “Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development” is a literature review featuring 62 arts education research studies, summarized and analyzed by leading experts across the disciplines of dance, drama, “multi-arts,” music, and visual arts.
• “Critical Links” has two ambitious goals: first, to identify strong arts education research that explores transference (“instances in which learning in one context assists learning in a different context”); and second, to inform curricular designs and practices that will enhance the quality and impact of student learning in the arts.
• The review examines studies by discipline (dance, drama, “multi-arts,” music, and visual arts) and found a broad range of correlations between the arts and various skills in diverse contexts. Particular attention was paid to reading and language skills, and of note were findings that appeared specifically related to a discipline, such as music linking to spatial-temporal reasoning (“the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations,” Wikipedia, modified as of June 30, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial-temporal_reasoning).
• The studies cover a wide range of different types of research methodology, including qualitative research (which takes a number of variables into consideration, and emphasizes looking at those variables in the environments where they’re found) and meta-analysis, a high-level process that compares the results of multiple studies addressing a set of related research hypotheses.
• Regardless of the methodology, most of the studies revealed correlations between learning in the arts and academic and cognitive development.
• However, throughout the Compendium, reviewers emphasized a need for further research to reveal the qualities of learning so that we can be better informed with how to move forward with future program design. In other words, we may see a link between engagement in the arts and improved SAT scores in a meta-analysis study, but we do not know exactly what the students were learning in their arts experiences that may have led to academic achievement.
• To better understand what is being learned and transferred to other skill-sets suggests a need to focus on more rigorous qualitative research that asks rich inquiry questions that may point to the nature of the learning. Meta-analysis has already corroborated some of the broader claims for why the arts are important in educational settings by showing links between learning in the arts among a myriad of students to academic and cognitive development. With the knowledge of vast previous research, we can begin to look more closely at the nuances of what is being learned in the arts, and how what is being learned transfers to other areas of learning.

SUMMARY

The story of “Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development,” an extraordinarily ambitious collection of research on arts education, begins in 1997, when a report published by the Arts Education Partnership’s Task Force on Research emphasized a need for a review of up-to-date research to help inform program design and policy. The National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education commissioned “Critical Links” – eventually published in 2002 – to address this need.

The Compendium is a literature review featuring 62 arts education research studies, summarized and analyzed by leading experts across the disciplines of dance, drama, “multi-arts,” music, and visual arts. To develop criteria for inclusion in the Compendium, James S. Catterall, Lois Hetland, and Ellen Winner were chosen as “researchers” by Arts Education Partnership (AEP) through a competitive selection process. They are joined by 11 other reviewers who summarize the studies, provide initial and secondary inquiry questions, and analyze each study, with recommendations for future research. While each study is presented individually in one to two pages, the original texts of the studies are not included. After each arts section (e.g., drama or dance), a reviewer delves into deeper inquiries revealed from links among the findings in the studies.

The Compendium sets out to achieve two ambitious goals:

1. Identify strong arts education research that includes the academic and social effects of arts learning, beyond the arts learning experiences themselves. In brief, the Compendium sets out to explore transference, which “denotes instances where learning in one context assists learning in a different context.”  The foreword by AEP explains that the purpose of this Compendium is “to make a contribution to the national debate over such issues as how to enable all students to reach high levels of academic achievement, how to improve overall school performance, and how to create the contexts and climates in schools that are most conducive to learning.”
2. “Giv[e] insight into curriculum designs and practices that will enhance the quality and impact of student learning in the arts.” Through the examined research studies, the Compendium reviewers hope to pave the way for more informed educational program design.

The Links: What Was Studied, What They Found
The studies in “Critical Links” are organized meticulously by discipline. The drama, multi-arts, and music sections examine 19, 17, and 15 studies respectively, with concluding essays by James Catterall, Rob Horowitz and Jaci Webb-Dempsey, and Larry Scripp. Notably, the dance section features only 7 studies and the visual arts section contains only four, with final essays by Karen Kohn Bradley and Terry L. Baker respectively. A final essay by Catterall called “Overview” discusses the issue of transference and makes recommendations about “where to go from here.”

Drama
The bulk of drama research examines the connection between arts education and linguistic skills, with an emphasis on reading and writing comprehension. Overall, the studies found that drama – and in particular, role-playing activities – did have a positive effect on linguistic development in the focus groups as compared with the control groups. Some of the other overarching findings from the drama research include:

• Drama education has an impact on improving concentrated thought
• Formal reflection on experiences in drama elicits/fosters interpersonal relations
• Drama improves story comprehension

Example: A study by Ann Podlozny exemplifies the link between dramatic arts and verbal skills. Entitled “Strengthening Verbal Skills Through the Use of Classroom Drama: A Clear Link,” the research study focuses on whether classroom drama helps students develop verbal ability. This is a meta-analysis combining the results of 200 studies since 1950 that address story understanding (oral and written measures), reading achievement and readiness, oral language development, vocabulary, and writing. Catterall explains that “positive effects are shown in… written and oral measures of story recall, reading achievement, reading readiness, oral language development, and writing,” and hopes that “the report will encourage teachers, teaching artists, and school administrators to include drama in their classroom practice.”

Dance
The dance research included in the Compendium focuses on, and strongly suggests, the impact of dance on creative problem-solving, reading skills, creative thinking skills, self-reflection and self confidence.

Example: In a study by Dale Rose called “The Impact of Whirlwind’s Basic Reading Through Dance Program on First Grade Student’s Basic Reading Skills: Study II,” first-graders were studied for three months to determine whether their reading abilities could be improved through a dance program in which the students used their bodies to physically represent letters. These students were studied against a control group. The experimental group improved compared to the control group, especially in their ability to relate written consonants and vowels to their sounds.

Multi-arts
The multi-arts programs in the Compendium focus on the correlation between arts experiences and academic achievement. These studies suggested connections between arts programs and improved reading skills, verbal skills, math skills, and creative thinking.

Example: James Catterall’s study from 1998 called “Involvement in the Arts and Success in Secondary School” shows a clear link between arts involvement and improved academic achievement. The data came from 25,000 students from eighth to tenth grade who were participating in the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988. The outcomes demonstrated that the students who were highly engaged in artistic experiences in middle school and high school performed better in academics than their non-arts-involved peers, regardless of socio-economic status. “High arts students… earned better grades and scores, were less likely to drop out of school… had a more positive self concept, and were more involved in community service.” Nevertheless, the results do not prove causation and underscore a need for further research to unpack the nature of the association between arts and academics.

Music
The research studies on music reveal correlations between musical study and cognitive development, language development, reading, self-efficacy (the degree to which a person believes that he can attain a goal or succeed in a certain situation), math proficiency, and spatial-temporal reasoning (“the ability to visualize spatial patterns and mentally manipulate them over a time-ordered sequence of spatial transformations”). Spatial-temporal reasoning is an important skill for solving problems in math, science, and everyday life.

Example: For “Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning,” Lois Hetland selected fifteen studies for a meta-analysis to explore whether active instruction in music enhances preschool and elementary students’ performance on spatial tasks. The data across the fifteen studies are so consistent in determining that music-making leads to spatial reasoning skills that differences in the type of musical instruction hardly change the results. The meta-analysis suggests that “offering a wide range of music programs in preschools and elementary schools similar to the ones reviewed… will predict that nearly 70 percent of young children will ‘show spatial improvement as a result of the music program.’”

Visual Arts
With only four studies examined, the visual arts are the least-represented discipline in the Compendium. The studies had different variables and goals, and as such, very different outcomes. As Catterall explains in his book summary, “[In the visual arts studies] we see only preliminary indications of impacts: that drawing is an effective communicator of learning in history and contributes to organization and persistence in writing — training in visualization contributes to reading skills — reasoning about visual art seems to transfer to reasoning about science — and instruction in visual art increases reading-readiness among preschoolers.”

Example: Jeffrey D. Wilhelm’s ethnographic case study, “Reading Is Seeing: Using Visual Response to Improve the Literary Reading of Reluctant Readers,” examines whether the visual arts can be used to help reluctant and learning-disabled readers to become better readers. Over the course of nine weeks, he studies two seventh-grade boys who were asked to make arts and crafts that represented characters in the stories they were reading and draw pictures of visual impressions they had. By the end of the nine weeks, the boys “took a more active role in reading, and began to interpret the text rather than just passively read it.”

Among the 84 effects that the researchers found the arts to have on student participants, a few emerged across all of the disciplines, including reading and math skills, and social interaction. Moreover, it is suggested that the findings in these studies may be of most importance to developing social and cognitive skills in impoverished children who may not have access to gaining such skills in other environments. (See James Catterall’s book summary for a concise overview of the findings and implications of “Critical Links.”)

ANALYSIS

Thankfully for the benefit of readers, the Compendium already contains a great deal of independent analysis to aid interpretation of the study results. Each study summary is followed by a thoughtful and informed commentary section, and each larger essay on the specific arts areas explores broader themes such as transference from the arts to other subject areas, implications for future research, and implications for policy. The Compendium seems to leave no stone unturned (or in this case, no inquiry forgotten). Any time I had an analysis that I felt was original, a researcher said it a few pages later with far more eloquence than I ever could.

What I can offer instead is an overview of what seemed to be the most significant takeaways from the body of research investigated here. In the spirit of “links,” I’ve tried to address common issues that arose throughout the Compendium as a whole, and to highlight some of the thought-provoking findings and questions that emerged from the studies. I’ll also examine some of the potential weaknesses in the research cited in the report.

Understanding who is being studied
Many research studies used experimental designs involving control groups of students. While the students are often at the same grade level, we don’t always know if they’re at the same emotional or behavioral levels. Do the sample groups tell us what we want to know about the research, or does it tell us about the demographic/age of the participants? One study that highlights this issue is Jennifer Ross Goodman’s “A Naturalistic Study of the Relationship Between Literacy Development and Dramatic Play in Five-Year-Old Children.” The study examines how literacy is developed within dramatic play by integrating daily dramatic play into a preschool classroom of 17 children. Reviewer Bruce Wilson points out that despite the detailed observations and findings in the study, “the biggest shortcoming of this type of research is the lack of generalizability to other settings… [T]he sample included a preponderance of females… Might the relationships look different in a predominantly male or balanced-gender context?” To further investigate the external validity of these findings, it would be helpful to compare this study with others that explore literacy development in preschool-age children, in order to ensure that demographics are not overly skewing the results.

Understanding the mechanisms of learning
In every arts section, one question appeared repeatedly: what exactly is being learned in an artistic experience that transfers to development in another area? For example, a student may have been taught a movement class, which resulted in her achieving better test scores. But what we don’t know is exactly what element of the dance class led to her developing certain academic skills. This information is essential to inform how we develop better arts education programs going forward.

One study that shows a specific relationship between an “arts” activity and reading ability is Dale Rose’s “The Impact of Whirlwind’s Basic Reading Through Dance Program on First Grade Students’ Basic Reading Skills: Study II.” Over the course of three months, a group of 174 children improved their basic reading skills by learning to put their bodies in the shapes of letters. They were compared with a control group of 198 children. While this finding indicates that first graders may improve their basic reading skills through movement, Ellen Winner observes that “this study does not allow the conclusion that dance leads to reading, but rather that putting one’s body in the shape of letters improves basic reading skills in young children. Whether or not this activity is ‘dance’ (a matter dancers could debate), we can conclude that this activity is an innovative and enactive way of helping children master sound-symbol relationships.”

In other studies, however, the correlation between artistic learning and developed skill is not as clear. For example, Kathryn Vaughn’s and Ellen Winner’s study “SAT Scores of Students Who Study the Arts: What We Can and Cannot Conclude about the Association” is a meta-analysis exploring the relationship between SAT scores and student involvement in the arts. Vaughn and Winner seem to have found significant relationships between involvement in the arts and higher math and verbal scores, but as reviewer Robert Horowitz points out, “the correlation between participation in high school arts programs and SAT scores is not sufficient in itself to claim that arts study leads to improvement in academic performance.”

The SAT study is one of a few studies that reveal a possible issue with meta-analysis research itself. Meta-analysis is a high-level process that compares the results of multiple studies addressing a set of related research hypotheses. The Vaughn/Winner study asked students taking the SAT to voluntarily fill out a questionnaire about the number of years they participated in arts classes. While meta-analysis allows for broad observations – in this case, that students who took four or more years of arts classes had the strongest SAT scores – it tends to gloss over the specific qualities of the arts programs or the learning experiences, due to the necessary heterogeneity involved in the process of combining disparate studies. What did those students do in their art classes that led to better test scores? Which activities triggered the cognitive development to improve math and verbal test-taking skills? To paraphrase reviewer Bruce Wilson’s commentary about the meta-analysis study “Mute Those Claims: No Evidence (Yet) for a Causal Link between Arts Study and Academic Achievement,” meta-analysis oftentimes takes a very limited range of factors into consideration, and excludes unanticipated outcomes.

One way to address this issue is to look at the findings of the qualitative and ethnographic research methodology. As indicated in the Martha C. Mentzer/Boni B. Boswell study “Effects of a Movement Poetry Program on Creativity of Children with Behavioral Disorders,” qualitative methods of reporting on research can be helpful in understanding the nature of the learning that is happening. Such methods include anecdotal records, observational checklists from videos of the sessions, questionnaires and interviews, and student work. In the study, the use of this methodology helped reveal the learning styles and creative thinking (defined here as “originality, fluency, and flexibility”) of two boys, aged 7 and 10. With meticulous documentation and citations from earlier studies, this study captured the rather nuanced development of behavior changes. As reviewer Karen K. Bradley comments, “… since one boy improved in social behavior and the other in motor coordination, the union of creative movement and poetry writing provided a ‘stronger fabric’ for development, especially for children of different and challenging learning styles.” She continues that “the most useful data for understanding the outcomes the boys achieved came from anecdotal records. The field needs to recognize that movement analysis may offer the clearest depiction of what cognitive or behavioral changes occur through involvement in dance.”

In fact, this last sentence could be applied to every arts discipline. Analysis of what exactly is being learned can reveal what changes happen cognitively in all of the artistic disciplines.

IMPLICATIONS

The research included in “Critical Links” is so diverse, from the methodology used to the discovered outcomes, that it is difficult to make a statement about the merits of one study over another. Taken as a whole, the Compendium offers strong evidence of correlation between arts study and academic and cognitive development.

Despite the comprehensiveness of the commentary sections, two questions seemed to be missing from the conversation:

1. If visual arts, music, multi-arts, dance, and drama all possibly impact a similar skill set (e.g. reading), how do we know which arts programs are most effective at promoting these skills?

Before we even go there, it should be reiterated that the dance and visual arts studies in this Compendium are vastly outnumbered by the other studies (7 and 4, respectively, compared with at least 15). This tells us that if and when we suggest which of the arts to focus on to develop specific cognitive abilities, we first need further research in the visual arts and dance arts.

Yet there is a need to not only develop arts research within specific disciplines, but among the disciplines as well as across academic learning, as suggested in the second of Paul DiMaggio’s three fallacies in identifying the effects of the arts on communities. As described in DiMaggio’s prospectus for the “Taking the Measure of Culture” symposium at Princeton University in June 2002, the second fallacy is that of homogeneity of effects. “We …often speak as if the arts …have undifferentiated effects on people and communities, whatever these effects may be. So we ask, ‘does art education improve math learning?’ or ‘do communities with lots of artistic resources have stronger economies?’ It is unlikely that there are general answers to these questions. Effects may be heterogeneous due to interactions with other factors, so that benign effects of artistic resources or experiences are visible only in the presence of other factors that facilitate the expression of those benign effects…. [D]ecisive effects of specific kinds of arts programs on a relatively small proportion of communities will be hidden unless we know where to look for them.

In other words, we need to look at multiple and potentially confounding factors when determining the impact that any given arts activity has on an unrelated skill. We could certainly use more longitudinal studies across different academic disciplines if we are to determine how the skills that are emerging through research are being used in other contexts.

2. What is research methodology telling us about the quality of outcomes?

While it may seem that arts involvement is desirable, it isn’t usually clear how rich or textured student involvement is in other subject areas as a result of their engagement with the arts.

The most compelling studies in “Critical Links” – at least for me – were those that explored the nuances of learning that took place.  One particularly resonated with me both in terms of methodology and in terms of outcome: “’Stand and Unfold Yourself,’ A Monologue on the Shakespeare & Company Research Study,” by Steve Seidel. In it, a team of research staff looked closely at the Shakespeare & Company’s National Shakespeare Institute to identify what made the program so successful and which elements of it could be transferable. (Note that there is already an assumption that the program is successful.) The program includes a one-month teacher training, followed by two months in which teaching artists guide about 400 students in 10 schools through the study and performance of Shakespeare plays.

What struck me at first was the ambiguity of the inquiry question: “How do participants [in the Shakespeare & Company program] identify the value of their participation for themselves?” The second question seemed even more elusive: “What elements of the program seemed most critical to creating those benefits?” I wondered how the study could possibly measure these things.

This is where the unique methodology of the study shone through. Unlike other studies, this one had the resources to assess two of the four years of students’ and staff participation. By the standards of the Compendium, this is a very long time. In addition, researchers held meetings with participants throughout the year and organized yearly retreats to extract what was being observed and learned; developed rich inquiry questions “around authenticity, academic rigor, applied learning, active exploration, adult relationships, and assessment practices,” and included teacher and student responses to these questions as evidence of the impacts and success of the program.

Along with these elements, Seidel focuses “on learning in … the language itself, acting, working in creative communities, and learning about oneself and linking that to social and intellectual development.” The findings were numerous, but most importantly, the study revealed that the complexity of studying Shakespeare plays allowed participants to delve into their own feelings and emotions. As Catterall comments, “the complexity of issues and emotions in the plays promotes word-by-word, emotion-by-emotion, thought-by-thought investigation of meaning. This step-by-step approach invites those who study Shakespeare to go deeply into their own experience, a process that is linked to all types of learning.”

So, do we all need to study more Shakespeare? Maybe. But I came away from this study thinking that, while it may not be realistic to replicate this kind of work extensively, it may nevertheless be prudent to invest in more in-depth qualitative research like this: research that asks more ambiguous inquiry questions and systematically measures both expected and unanticipated outcomes.

Building on the field’s existing and expansive arts education research, we have an opportunity to unlock the deeper inquiries about how the arts shape human development. If we can use what already exists (such as the wealth of findings from studies like those included in the Compendium), and take a step-by-step approach at looking at the nuances of learning, perhaps we’ll begin to form stronger links within and beyond arts education to develop rich, holistic learning experiences that can help shape future generations of critical thinkers, and creative learners and leaders.

Further reading:

• James S. Catterall, Book Summary
• Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner, Beyond the Evidence Given: A Critical Commentary on Critical Links (in this essay, Hetland and Winner take Catterall and editor Richard Deasy to task for inflating, in their opening and concluding essays, the degree to which causal interpretations can be drawn from the studies contained within the volume)
• Summary/synthesis by Americans for the Arts

Portrait of Jimmy Jones, John (O.) Levy, and Al Casey(?), Pied Piper, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947 | Library of Congress

Apparently, presenters, musicians, managers, promoters, and journalists spend a lot of time pondering the same question – along with another one: “Who are the people who might be enticed to hear live jazz but aren’t participating yet?” I was curious to explore the unique world of jazz audience development around the U.S, and what might be a shared vision across the jazz community for engaging listeners.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WHERE JAZZ HAS LIVED, WHO LISTENED TO IT, AND HOW THEY ACCESSED IT

To understand who listens to jazz now (and who doesn’t), we should really start with a few watershed moments from the history of jazz in the last century.

Jazz Shifts to Whiter Audiences

Portrait of James P. (James Price) Johnson, Albert Nicholas, Johnny Windhurst, Marty Marsala, Sandy Williams, and Danny Alvin, Webster Hall, New York, N.Y., ca. June 1947 | Library of Congress

In the early 1900s, Dixieland Jazz (aka Ragtime and New Orleans Jazz) became popular with white listeners as millions of white families enjoyed musicians like Scott Joplin and purchased sheet music to play his tunes on their home pianos. The invention of the phonograph continued this trend, as people across the United States heard the sounds of blues songs from the South in the early 1920s.

Prohibition also played a role in attracting white audiences. Venues that served alcohol featured jazz ensembles such as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, drawing both white and black audiences from all social classes (check out more about the Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance here).

Jazz Shifts to Wider Audiences Through Recording Technology

Millions more Americans gained access to the genre through frequency modulated (FM) radio in 1933, and to full-length jazz records with the introduction of the long playing record (LPR) in 1948.

Jazz Shifts to the Major Stages, Effectively Becoming More “Legitimized” as an Art Form

With Benny Goodman’s performance at Carnegie Hall in 1938, jazz began to shift from underground venues to widely-respected concert halls, where people would pay more money to hear their favorite jazz musicians of the time.

Benny Goodman | image by Heinrich Klaffs

Jazz Becomes Academic

In 1945, Lawrence Berk founded a school (currently known as the Berklee College of Music) to teach jazz, the popular music of the time. More schools began to offer jazz throughout the 1950s-1980s, creating a new community of students as audience members and an educational tradition of the genre.

But really, it was the music itself that attracted more listeners. As a PBS article explains, “Jazz was different because it broke the rules — musical and social. It featured improvisation over traditional structure, performer over composer, and black American experience over conventional white sensibilities.”

Jazz Popularity Grows

During the 1980s, jazz maintained widespread popularity. A 1992 study by the NEA explains the statistical trends in jazz audiences during this time:

“The potential audience for jazz has grown significantly. About one-third of American adults (up from 26 percent in 1982) reported that they “liked jazz,” and about 5 percent (up from 3 percent in 1982) reported that they liked jazz “best of all” musical genres. In 1992, 25 percent of adult Americans expressed a desire to attend jazz performances… compared with 18 percent in 1982.”

The Jazz Audience Downturn

From 2002-2008, the genre has suffered a serious downturn in audiences. According to the most recent NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, the proportion of Americans attending live jazz events dropped precipitously between 2002 and 2008, and the percent of people reporting “liking” jazz dropped from 34% in 1992 to 24.2% in 2008. While people now seemingly have a myriad of ways to access jazz (online, in major and small venues, through schools, on jazz radio and Pandora, to name a few), the figures in this study are the lowest ever recorded.

Creatively Capturing New Audiences

Faced with this shifting landscape, the jazz community is starting to experiment with new approaches in hopes of broadening the music’s reach. For this article, I spoke with presenters, musicians, managers, promoters, and journalists to hear what they’re doing or seeing to creatively invite people to explore and indulge in this fascinating world of improvisation.

INNOVATION IN PROGRAMMING AND PROMOTION: PART I

A Presenter

Brass, Bows and Beats at Palace of Fine Arts | image by Jazz Mafia

One organization that is taking a multi-tiered approach to reaching new audiences is SFJAZZ in San Francisco. Executive Director Randall Kline graciously allowed me to barrage him with questions so that I could learn a little more about his strategies and motives.

One of SFJAZZ’s motives is to reach younger audiences. Pointing to the work of Alan Brown and the research of the NEA, Kline underscored the need to tap into younger audiences if we want jazz to have an audience in the future. However, Kline’s vision reaches beyond the self-interested goal of a presenter to simply build a future audience. “Jazz is a reference point for contemporary culture,” explained Kline. He believes that jazz has a freedom and energy which people can relate to, and he wants to share his passion for this art form by inviting more people to access it in a highly engaging way.

The SFJAZZ Collective is a prime example of how SFJAZZ is innovating with programming and promotion to attract new audiences. Each year, SFJAZZ commissions the 8 members of this performer-composer collective to write one original piece and one arrangement of a single composer, resulting in 16 pieces each year. This year — with Kline’s encouragement –the arranged composer was Stevie Wonder, and it’s no wonder that the live shows were well-attended. While I wasn’t able to obtain overall ticket sale statistics, every night of the band’s Jazz Standard appearances with this program in New York City was sold out in March 2011.

Kline’s matchmaking of the SFJAZZ Collective and Jack Conte — half of the YouTube sensation Pomplamoose — afforded an opportunity to tap into current social media for promotion. Conte recorded a video song of the SFJAZZ Collective playing Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” at his home recording studio and used his YouTube channel to post the video, which has received about 53,500 hits at the time of this posting. Not only was the collaboration a successful foray into using YouTube for promotional strategy, it also connected musicians from different genres. As bassist Matt Penman explained: “It was great to work with someone we admired in a different genre, like Jack, who has become a YouTube star through great music and harnessing a piece of the zeitgeist. It all helps the band reach out to people who haven’t been able to get to a live gig.”

In the spirit of staying current with the interests of young audiences, Kline also mentioned the possibility of offering shorter programs for people who may not want to commit to a 90-minute or 2 hour performance. SFJAZZ has also worked to reach more locals by presenting music at their bars and venues. So far, SFJAZZ doesn’t have statistics for how many of its tickets are being purchased by younger audiences. Nor is there sufficient data as to how many of those young bar patrons actually come to an SFJAZZ concert. However, Kline believes that if you bring the people to you, and program music that people want to hear, you can get more young people engaging with jazz.

SFJAZZ is trying to do just that by building a $60 million venue that will be the first “stand-alone” jazz space in the U.S, as well as the first large-scale jazz venue on the West Coast. Featuring a flexible-seating concert hall, a black-box theater, digital learning lab, practice rooms, and a street-level cafe, the design of the new space is testament to the lengths SFJAZZ will go to ensure that the organization can stay as current and approachable to the community as possible. Kline explains his vision and more about the design in a Wall Street Journal article: There are “cup holders to help concertgoers feel more like they’re in a club; movable seating [for dancing]; high-end coffee served in the café daily starting at 7 a.m.” “It must be open for breakfast!” Kline insisted of the café, “not just when there’s a concert. Make it a community place where people want to hang.”

INNOVATION IN PROGRAMMING AND PROMOTION, PART II

The Internet

While institutions like SFJAZZ focus on bringing people to live events, there is a parallel push across the jazz world to drive potential listeners to the internet. Innovative promotional organizations like Search and Restore have emerged to create community both in venues and on the internet. “Dedicated to developing and uniting the audience for new jazz music,” Search and Restore “organize[s] concerts and festivals, as well as [a] website which currently serves as a home for concert listings for the jazz scene in New York City.” Founder Adam Schatz recently secured $75,000 on a Kickstarter campaign to bolster the site with video of jazz performances. Why is he doing all of this? He wonders why the jazz concerts he loves don’t attract the same audiences as the rock shows he attends, when some jazz performances are just as edgy, groovy, and provocative as the rock scene. Schatz wants to create an experience, a community of listeners, of jazz lovers, regardless of age or background. As he described in a New York Times article, “’My mission is to bring people together around art[.] We don’t care who you are or how old you are. We just want you to get down.’” Is he successful? Well, that has yet to be seen in terms of statistics. But he thinks so: “I see the same people come to my shows, I know they’re there for Search and Restore, and that’s what excites me.”

Alex Rodriguez from radio station WBGO explained what this balance of radio listenership and internet engagement means for WBGO. On the one hand, the station wants to meet the needs and interests of its listeners, which Rodriguez explained is mainly an over-40 African American audience. To attract new listeners, WBGO combines advocacy for jazz programming with a local outreach news department that deals with communities in Newark and throughout New Jersey. Rodriguez believes that by cultivating local community, the radio has increased its listenership. On the other hand, when WBGO received a grant to open a second content stream over HD radio and the web, Rodriguez was asked to help keep the content fresh, manage the blog, and develop new content initiatives. The goal of this online content stream is to drive more listeners to the internet to discover new and emerging artists, as well as to participate interactively in learning about the artists they’re listening to.

Venues are also exploring how the internet can be useful in inviting people to their spaces to hear jazz. Smalls Jazz Club has even gone so far as to set up a live videocast of its performances. From 7:30pm onward on show nights, Smalls streams the gigs live from a small camera in the ceiling. While the experience of watching the show from what looks like a security camera may feel slightly voyeuristic, it is certainly a wonderful opportunity for people to watch live jazz if they can’t attend in person. (Perhaps one note of caution if you happen to be at Smalls sitting at the bar: watch what you say. The camera stays on during the breaks, and yes, you can hear people’s bar conversations online!)

Education

Image by woodleywonderworks

Education is as relevant – if not more so – to audience engagement as innovative promotion and marketing. Pianist Vijay Iyer describes the significance of exposure to jazz through education in his Jazz Times article:

“The question boils down not to accessibility, but to access. How do people find this music today? They might hear a little about it on NPR, or they might find it on YouTube, or they might notice the very capable improvisers backing up Beyoncé or Maxwell. But, most obviously, young people are discovering jazz by playing it, enrolling in high school and college jazz programs.”

Synonymous with jazz education, Jazz at Lincoln Center has been inviting people into its home to experience jazz since 2000. If you look at the website for JALC, the list of ways to participate is awe-inspiring in its scope. No matter what age you are or background you come from, JALC has a way for you to experience jazz. Director of Education Erika Floreska kindly agreed to interview for this blog.

Clearly, JALC is positioned to have a huge influence on the way we access jazz. While the marketing department focuses on getting people in seats, the education department is focused more on giving people a rich experience with jazz. The education department reaches people of all ages and backgrounds, from very young children in its WeBop! program, to students and teachers in its performance and appreciation programs, to adults in its continuing education programs.

For JALC, audience development is less about building the next professional jazz musician and more about giving people an opportunity to relate to jazz in multiple ways. Some of these avenues for engagement, according to Floreska, include connecting improvisation to daily life and living, relating to the musicians’ lives and personalities, providing opportunities to experience the culture and social environment of jazz, understanding the history of our country through the lens of jazz, and emphasizing the storytelling element of the performances.

JALC wants to give even the youngest in the NYC community a chance to engage with jazz through its WeBop!program, to children as young as 8 months. Each week, 200 families come to take classes. There’s no advertising, so this number of participants is quite high. Floreska explained that the program is substantive and fun for both children and their parents. But most importantly, this program helps parents identify how their children respond to music, so that they can continue the learning at home and support their children’s continued music making.

While it may not be clear how many of the students grow up to be subscribers to jazz concert series, JALC can track which students graduate through WeBop! and move up through classes sequentially, so the organization understands how many kids are going through the program and coming into the halls to hear jazz.

Floreska considers the most innovative program at JALC — at least in terms of its reach — to be Essentially Ellington. Every year, JALC distributes transcribed charts of the Duke Ellington Orchestra to high school bands around the United States and abroad (96,000 copies of 92 previously unavailable scores have been produced), and has currently reached over 330,000 students. All of the participating bands may enter a recording for a competition, in which selected bands participate in workshops in their communities across North America and as finalists in a three-day festival in New York City.

This year, Essentially Ellington initiated a successful webcasting and social media campaign, connecting both to the home communities of the 16 finalist bands, as well as across the world. A live webcast of the annual competition weekend drew hundreds of consistent viewers from all 50 states and Puerto Rico as well as 51 countries, with the help of Starbucks via a tweet to its 1.5 million followers.

At JALC, engaging audiences means not only younger audiences, but all audiences. JALC wants to reach everyone, because as Floreska explains, jazz can bolster our ability to be creative citizens. From the education standpoint, Floreska explained that it’s not just the ticket sales they’re interested in, it’s the quality of engagement, which is oftentimes far more elusive to capture in assessment data. (For more information on research in jazz engagement, check out Jazz Audiences Initiative, which is setting out to “tackle fundamental questions about how and why people engage with jazz.”) When we evaluate what kind of learning is happening in these jazz settings, we can have a better understanding of how to keep those people coming back for more and richer experiences with jazz in the future.

IF YOU BUILD IT, (HERE’S HOPING) THEY WILL COME

Salt Lake City Jazz Festival 2010 | image by Jeremy Franklin

From every conversation I had, it seemed that creating a supportive and engaging community in which people can experience jazz must be the goal, not only to increase ticket sales, but to enrich people’s lives by experiencing jazz in meaningful ways. Wycliffe Gordon explains the importance of building community in his article “Megaphone: No Place Like Harlem” in the May 2011 New York City Jazz Record. “The Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival is presented by the Apollo Theater, Harlem Stage and Jazzmobile. Isn’t it wonderful that three competing arts organizations have united to sponsor a festival? … Like Harlem of yesterday, people can go from place to place to hear jazz all night long.”

It may not take developing a brand new building, but if we want to grow our audiences, we need to create environments in which people can connect not only to the music itself, but to an accessible community of people who share a love for or interest in the world of improvisation.

AFTERWORD

To learn more about other organizations around the country that are actively engaging new — and very young — audiences in jazz, click on the links below.

Jazz House Kids in New Jersey is a creative space for young people to explore the world of jazz and learn about improvisation in life by working with professional jazz musicians and educators. Christian McBride is on the board of directors.

The Chicago Jazz Philharmonic’s Jazz Alive Program (Orbert Davis, Artistic Director) brings jazz to inner-city kids in Chicago on a linear track from Kindergarten to high school.

Jazz St. Louis has brought jazz to over 90,000 students through multiple education programs in the St. Louis area.

Jazz Arts Group in Columbus, Ohio offers a myriad of ways for diverse populations to access jazz. Jazz Audience Initiative (mentioned above) is a project of Jazz Arts Group.

Jazz Standard Discovery Program: The Jazz Standard, the New York City jazz club, presents an ensemble of young jazz musicians on Sundays as a way to connect schoolchildren to jazz.

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (image by gichristof)

El Sistema is a system of youth orchestras in Venezuela designed to save the lives of under-served children through intensive and fun participation in music. Founded in 1975 by a visionary man named Jose Antonio Abreu (the former Venezuelan Advisor of the National Economic Council and the Minister of State for Culture), El Sistema has become a paradigm for social action through quality music-making. Currently, over 350,000 children are making music in orchestras across Venezuela through intensive after-school programs at nucleos (centers). Through immersion in rehearsals, group lessons, private lessons, master classes, and performances, the participants have multiple group and peer-learning opportunities to refine their musical voices while developing important life skills. The program is self-perpetuating and comprehensive in its structure: as children are encouraged to start at a very young age and move sequentially through the program, many of them become El Sistema teachers, creating a culture of educators deeply committed to the social and musical mission of the program. Furthermore, the program works with parents to ensure that the children are supported in their musical studies in the home as well as in the nucleos.

Over the last five years, the El Sistema “model” has become a sensation around the world as more musicians and arts leaders have visited Venezuela and felt inspired to adapt the program within their communities. Others have learned about El Sistema on programs like 60 Minutes and through the popularity of Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel. I had the opportunity to visit El Sistema in Venezuela in 2007, and everything about it was intoxicating: the enthusiasm of the teachers and administrators to save disadvantaged children through music, the level of the musicianship, the camaraderie of the students and teachers, the music-festival spirit of the program (it felt like my experiences at summer music festivals, only this program is all year long), the concert hall designed specifically to advance the education and performance opportunities of El Sistema participants, the participatory nature of every rehearsal and performance. Not to mention that the El Sistema folks know how to have a really good time, and don’t seem to blur the lines between working hard at their music and partying (a motto of El Sistema is “To Play and To Fight.”)

This spirit, coupled with the enormous breadth of the program, has captured the attention of the rest of the world. From the Americas to Europe, from Asia to Africa, from New Zealand to the Middle East, El Sistema programs seem to be springing up everywhere, spurring major strategic conversations about how to reach children from economically under-served backgrounds using this daily after-school, fun, orchestra-based model of music education. El Sistema has had a particularly powerful influence in this country in the last five years. Large to small organizations have found themselves asking, “What is this El Sistema thing all about? Should we consider starting an El Sistema-inspired program? If so, what does it look like for our community?”

In the U.S., the El Sistema movement has manifested itself in multiple ways, and nearly forty El Sistema-inspired programs have emerged around the country to reach needy communities in recent years (check the map to see some of the programs). In 2009, after ten years of building a strong relationship between El Sistema and the New England Conservatory of Music, Mark Churchill, a former dean at NEC, launched the El Sistema USA center along with its first major initiative, the Abreu Fellows program, to support the El Sistema movement in the U.S. The awarding of the TED Prize to José Antonio Abreu greatly assisted the effort. The Abreu Fellows program trains musicians in developing the El Sistema model (disclaimer: I’ll be joining the 2011-2012 class of Fellows). While NEC and El Sistema USA decided to part ways in 2010 so that El Sistema USA could develop into a robust networking organization for El Sistema programs around the U.S., NEC will continue to host the Abreu Fellows program.

Symposia and conferences about El Sistema have taken place in various cities (such as Los Angeles, Texas, Boston, New York, and Baltimore), and the League of American Orchestras provides resources on its website such as written material from conferences, videos of El Sistema workshops, and articles by prominent arts education leaders like Eric Booth. Even filmmakers are excited about capturing the programs in the U.S.: filmmaker Pedro Carvajal is making a documentary on Anne Fitzgibbon’s Harmony Program, and Jamie Bernstein (Leonard Bernstein’s daughter) is making a documentary film about Abreu Fellow Stanford Thompson’s Tune Up Philly program.

Not surprisingly, major orchestras have pondered their role in regard to El Sistema. The LA Philharmonic swept in with the first major U.S. El Sistema initiative in 2008 to “build youth orchestras in communities throughout Los Angeles,” as Gustavo Dudamel prepared to become its conductor. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra followed with its OrchKids program, which provides in- and after-school music appreciation and instrumental learning opportunities to Baltimore City children. Other orchestras have opted out of starting El Sistema for various reasons. As Cayenne Harris, Director of Learning and Access Initiatives at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra explained, the CSO orchestra management spent numerous hours discussing what the CSO’s role might be in offering El Sistema, but ultimately decided that the CSO was not the right host for an El Sistema program. Instead, they looked to other ways that they could be more helpful in supporting the movement: for example, by hosting a Festival of Youth in Music that brings together multiple organizations who may never have had the opportunity to collaborate around the theme of music for social change. For more information on the CSO response to El Sistema, download the PowerPoint presentation entitled “A Distinct Approach” here. Other orchestras have developed partnerships to support the movement, such as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s collaboration with The Atlanta Music Project.

It will be interesting to see the measurable (and non-measurable) impact that El Sistema in the U.S. is having on the children who are participating in its programs. For now, though, it’s pretty exciting to see how one man’s vision to create an after-school orchestral music education program in Venezuela back in 1975 has inspired many of our cultural organizations and artists to take action and innovate in music education for social change.

From the Obama-Biden Transition Project via Flickr

In his 2011 State of the Union Address, President Obama spent almost 10 of his 60 minutes discussing why it’s so essential to offer every child a world-class education:

Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school […] To all 50 states, we said, ‘If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.’

As part of his education agenda, Obama proposes to change the No Child Left Behind Act, formerly known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). You may have heard of No Child Left Behind: a Bush-administration law that requires schools to heavily test students, and that punishes schools where students do not meet baseline test scores. It hasn’t really worked, but more on this later.

What I wanted to know is what Obama is proposing in his “Blueprint for Reform: the Re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.” And perhaps the juicier question for the arts education field: what does this proposal imply for the future of the arts in schools?

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act: A brief history

In 1965, the U.S poverty rate was at about nineteen percent (higher than the yearly national average, which vacillates between 13%-17%; in 2009, the figure was about 14.3%). To tackle this problem, President Lyndon Johnson created a legislative agenda called the Great Society, an initiative to provide social welfare programs from education to health care, including a program called the War on Poverty. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was designed as part of the War on Poverty to ensure that every child had equal access to quality education. It was enacted initially through 1970, but Congress has voted for its re-authorization every 5 years since then.

While it has gone through a few revisions since 1965, the most significant changes took place in 2001 under the Bush administration, when the ESEA was re-authorized with a new name and very different set of guidelines, known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The main goal of NCLB was for all students to reach national levels of academic achievement each year through rigorous standardized testing.

Why No Child Left Behind failed

Under NCLB, 100% of students are expected to reach government-set “proficiency” by 2014. All 4th-8th grade students are required to improve on test scores each year in reading and math, “something no educational system anywhere on earth has ever accomplished,” Claudia Wallis notes. Evidence now shows that since the law was enacted, schools have failed in meeting the standards set by NCLB. As of March 9, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is saying that 82% of schools could be labeled as failing federal standards under No Child Left Behind. Check out more articles about the problems with the law here and here.

The rigorous testing has had an impact on the arts, as many teachers have had very little time to focus on integrating other subjects into the curriculum. Douglas Mefford sums it up best: “With the threat of lost funding and even total disbanding of the school at risk if even one specific group of students did not show ‘improvement,’ school systems were forced to redefine and lower their educational standards in order to avoid punishment.”

Obama’s proposal to change NCLB: Blueprint for Re-authorization of ESEA

The Obama administration proposes a different – and equally ambitious – goal to replace that of NCLB: for every student to graduate from high school prepared for college and the work-force.

The biggest shift presented by Obama’s proposal is that instead of giving a little money to everyone and implementing punitive measures for failure to perform, the government offers incentives in the form of grants to people doing the best work. The idea is to leverage current financial resources for dramatic systemic change, and to empower districts, schools, and teachers to make the best decisions about improving their educational environments.

A NY Times article from March 2010 explains more about the Blueprint: “The administration would replace the law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure individual students’ academic growth and judge schools based not on test scores alone but also on indicators like pupil attendance, graduation rates and learning climate.”

A Complete Education

Obama asserts that in order to remain a competitive country economically and otherwise, our students need a complete education, and encourages “a new investment in improving teaching and learning in all content areas – from literacy to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to history, civics, foreign languages, the arts, financial literacy, environmental education, and other subjects – and in providing accelerated learning opportunities to more students to make post-secondary success more attainable.”

A complete education… sigh. I suddenly had visions of every school around the country starting an orchestra program, an art department, a choir. Children singing in harmony as they became more proficient in history, more creative in science, more savvy in math. OK, maybe not quite. But is a “complete education” as promising as it sounds, particularly for the arts?

At a first glance, it is.

To ensure a well-rounded education, the Blueprint offers competitive grants to states, nonprofits, and districts to strengthen teaching and learning in areas such as the arts (Blueprint, pg. 28). In order to make the case to keep or develop the arts in schools, the federal government first has to recognize the arts as an academic subject, and one sentence in this Blueprint indicates that we’re headed in the right direction: “Competitive grants will be awarded… to programs [that] focus on improving student academic achievement in core academic subjects, ranging from science, to history, [and] the arts.” (Blueprint, pg. 32).

Creating incentives for success, playing to people’s strengths instead of their weaknesses. Sounds great, but how do these grants work?

Richard Kessler (no relation), Executive Director of The Center for Arts Education, was tremendously helpful in providing some guidance for this blog. He broke down the grant process, and why he thinks it may pose challenges to getting education funding, as follows:

Grant process

• Oftentimes, a project is initiated and developed by an arts organization, which needs to partner with a Local Education Agency (LEA) to be eligible for the grant.
• Each LEA and partners apply together in one application for each individual grant.
• One example of an LEA taking the lead is the Rochester School District, which has initiated arts integration projects with cultural organizations. Every project needs to have a set of outcomes in arts learning alongside improvement to test scores in English and math.

Challenges

• Core funding for school districts should be tax-levy based “hard” funding, which is a larger pool of money that lasts longer than grant money (“soft” money), which runs out.
• Grant money might be great for certain research projects that school districts may not pay for, but arts organizations and school districts question the feasibility of building or sustaining programs that rely on the short-term nature of outside funding.

So, the grant process may not be that appealing for long-term arts education support. While grants may not be a major threat to integrating arts into schools, there are three other issues that could be significant potential threats:

The uncertain future of testing: It seems as if Obama’s proposal reorganizes the funding available to the arts and gives schools more flexibility in assessing student achievement. However, we have little proof that the rigorous testing will actually go away. And if the testing doesn’t go away, teachers may continue to put the arts on the curricular back burner to make more time to prepare students for tests in reading and math.

Budget ambiguity: Nothing is explained in the Blueprint about how much of the grant “pie” the arts will get. An issue brief from Americans for the Arts indicates that the arts will be part of a bigger pool of other subjects, but that we don’t know yet how much the arts will get in this pool.

Proposed budget cuts: It appears as if there’s an even bigger threat to the revival of the arts in schools: on March 1, Congress voted to eliminate the Arts Education Program at the federal level as part of a temporary budget measure, which will take away $40 million in current-year funding for arts in schools unless it is reversed.

I like Richard Kessler’s silver lining on his blog Dewey21C: “Maybe it will take these sorts of events to create new possibilities for how the field can work together and with other sectors to advocate for children, education, and the arts.”

Obama’s Blueprint may seem promising for the arts, but we still do not know whether it will shift schools away from rigorous testing to focus on building a complete and robust education for students, with the arts as well as with other subjects. What we can do is work together to make sure that the arts are recognized as an essential part of a well-rounded education for all of our future leaders.

Here’s some more information about supporting the arts in schools if you’re curious:

Time-line for restoring funding to the federal Arts Education Program

The next continuing resolution is between March and September 30. In other words, now.

How to make a difference today

Join arts education advocates by writing to your Congressperson and asking to restore funding to the Arts Education Program. This would reinstate funding that was cut, and would ensure more access to grants for the arts. Take five minutes to fill out an easy online petition here or here.