The many worlds of arts education began to grow into one worldwide community in March 2006. Twelve hundred arts education leaders, in delegations from 97 countries, attended the United Nation's Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) first-ever worldwide arts education conference, held for four days in Lisbon, Portugal. The representation ranged from 40 US participants (but no official government representative), to the sole representative from the African country of Niger, who could get no funding support from his government--so he sold his car to learn what the world knew about the present and future of arts education. In this article, the author gives an in-depth, Teaching Artist (TA) focused overview of the historic Lisbon UNESCO arts-ed conference.