Arts Ed Now!

After a successful first 3 years of the Arts Ed Now campaign, 2020 was poised for the next chapter in this effort to increase active participation in arts education throughout New Jersey. As with all things in the transformative year, Arts Ed Now pivoted to address the most pressing issues in the face of COVID-19, school closings and a whole new approach to education.

The NEW Arts Ed Now 2.0 Action Hub

Already in the works, a new “Action Hub” website/app was launch to arts ed champions in the summer of 2020 with a full-scale roll out in conjunction with Arts in Education Week in September. The new hub streamlines the information and activates a community of advocates in more direct ways:

• Hot action items are features in the Take Action section and pushed out immediately to subscribers
• Resources & Tools provide the background and details for arts ed champions to make the case.
• A Directory of Champions gives people direct access to each other for shared knowledge and brainstorming

See the new Action Hub in action here!

Keeping Arts Ed Safe at School

As schools in New Jersey – and across the country – re-opened in some form or another, the question of student safety became the #1 priority. To help teachers, students and school admins navigate this confusing situation, Arts Ed NJ and the National Federation of High School Associations teamed up to identify the most critical practices. Social Impact then helped make it into a modular infographic that could be shared and posted – as well as a printed poster reminder for the walls!

See this and other infographics on the new Action Hub here!

Paterson Public Schools named “Arts Ed Now” Renaissance District

Congratulations to Paterson Public Schools! The 2018-2019 school year is the first year in more than two decades that PPS students were provided universal access to arts education at the elementary level. Read more about this historic action here.

It’s always exciting to work on a new campaign. The energy of a powerful idea mixed with the spirit of dedicated advocates can spark creativity that makes promoting important social issues thrilling. At Social Impact Studios, we’ve helped craft hundreds of public awareness initiatives over the years, and the best ones always bring together a large group to generate a message that amplifies all the voices of the people most affected by the issue. Arts Ed Now is one of those campaigns – and is especially exciting for us because we get to be a part of it as the effort’s Creative Partner.

In today’s media-focused culture, it’s fairly easy to design creative public awareness pushes. There are plenty of tools and a lot of good examples to follow. But creativity is not enough to make real and lasting change alone. To do that, you need to think beyond the “one-off” promotional campaign and leverage the strength of those involved – setting a stage that encourages movement-building at every step of the way. The Arts Ed Now campaign intentionally followed such a path and the backstory on its development is a good example of how challenging and rewarding it can be to work in creative collaboration with a group of dedicated people.

Arts Ed Now started out as the idea of a few inspired visionaries to pick up the baton from a previous campaign called “Arts for Every Kid.” More than a decade ago, Arts for Every Kid set out to assure arts education across the state of New Jersey. Having achieved the result of 97% of school districts now offering arts education in some form, the next step would be to increase participation for even better results. This time around, the process would focus on engaging existing arts education champions from local to state levels and across all ages from students themselves to teachers to long-time policy-makers and administrators. Instead of developing a ready-made campaign behind closed doors, Arts Ed Now stakeholders were part of the creation of a multi-year effort to increase active creative learning that is good for all students and good for New Jersey.

It was a smart approach. By building a movement as well as a platform, we not only engaged ambassadors ahead of the public campaign launch, but also learned more about what was really happening with arts education at the local level – and what needed to be done to address inequity in key areas of the state. The first year of direct, grassroots discovery revealed that there was still quite a bit of work to do to assure access for many students in New Jersey. We couldn’t leap only to increasing participation if baseline access wasn’t yet available everywhere. The power of a statewide stakeholder network now gives the campaign a way to address both elements simultaneously and achieve results through shared experiences and practices.

Senator Cory Booker

As we all get ready for the public launch of Arts Ed Now during Arts Education Week September 12 – 17, 2016, it is exciting to see how the campaign has come together through the insights and hard work of a large and creative group of people. It is important to remember that all of that creative energy generated was only the beginning – gearing us all up to go out of the gate with a strong and unified campaign designed to amplify the many voices of advocates everywhere. With that foundation underneath us, just imagine where it can go from here!