2007 Campus-Community Partnerships

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Artists as Activists/Evaluating Arts Education

Abstract:

Artists as Activists/ Evaluating Arts Education is an innovative collaboration that will share the expertise of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC) and the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies (GSEIS) with The HeArt Project (HP) in developing and evaluating effective arts education programs. WAC’s “Food and Democracy” theme for the 2007-08 school year will be taken into HP’s classrooms, providing an opportunity for HP students to explore the same theme as college students, learn from WAC faculty, and present their artwork on the theme at the UCLA campus. Professor Marvin Alkin and graduate student researchers in GSEIS will evaluate the impact of the collaboration between HP and WAC on high school students. During the same time, a WAC graduate/ post-graduate student will teach in a HP classroom for two years and conduct research on the role of the artist as activist. Products to be developed are: 1) a published evaluation summary report; 2) an evaluation tool for HP to conduct ongoing evaluation; 3) public presentations of student artwork at UCLA; and 4) a paper on the role of artist as activist. The products will provide valuable information to HP on the effectiveness of its program, to GSEIS on evaluation theory versus practice, and to WAC on the intersection between art, education, and activism. In addition to benefiting the three partners, the project will impact the role of the arts on the field of continuation education and the dialogue on artists as activists.

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