It Takes A City: Surrounding Children
with the Arts

Tuesday, October 14, 10:00 am – 11:30 am
Dogwood A, M1/Street Level

Organized by Mary Trudel, senior communications officer, The Wallace Foundation. Presented by Mary Trudel; Rory MacPherson, senior program officer, The Wallace Foundation; Gigi Antoni, executive director, Big Thought; Susan Bodilly, director, RAND Education; and Dr. Michael Hinajosa, superintendent, Dallas Independent School District.

Even as curriculums narrow across the country, many communities are aiming to make the arts a central part of the learning and development of all children. This session explores how school, cultural, and city leaders and funders are collaborating in six urban areas—Alameda County in Northern California, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles County and New York City—to build on existing assets to develop coordinated arts learning systems.

Using findings from recent reports from the RAND Corporation, this session will present a framework and lessons learned for inspiring local community commitment to arts learning.

Presentation of findings will be from the new RAND “Revitalizing Arts Education through Community-Wide Coordination” report, amplified by “on the ground” insights from Dallas, one of the cities studied in the report, by the Executive Director of Big Thought, the city’s arts and cultural education agency and the superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District which serves 180,000 students K-12.

Participants will be encouraged to map their cities’ efforts to pool resources and coordinate activities to make arts learning accessible to more children.

Suggested Links:

Revitalizing Arts Education Through Community-Wide Coordination