This article includes the script of a performance from the Communities of Inquiry Symposium at the Ethnography in Education Research Forum, March 1, 2014. The event invited audience members to imagine the relationship of the arts, multimodality, research, and critical pedagogy, through an evocation of a community of adolescents' and…

A theater project situated within an Alternative to Incarceration Program (ATIP), the Insight Project provided a venue for youth to engage in storytelling and dramatic performance, and allowed for those stories to find diverse and interested audiences. For the young men and women involved, authoring occurred at multiple instances and in multiple…

Interested in bringing the benefits of the arts as integral to quality education for all children, in 2004 the Ford Foundation launched the National Arts Education Initiative, a seven-year demonstration in nine communities across the United States. Building from arts education programs that serve "pockets" of children, Ford investments aim to…

This qualitative study examines alternative arts-based education in two urban educational settings for underrepresented or marginalized youth. In particular, the authors use postcolonial and feminist theories to create borderland spaces where marginalized youth can develop strong identities, establish a community mindset, and cultivate leadership…

Over the last five years, the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice (SLJ), a new, small public high school in Brooklyn, and The Essentials, a professional theater company, have joined forces to offer a low-budget, high-quality, in-house afterschool theater program for SLJ students. Both SLJ and The Essentials were in nascent stages when the…

Beyond having value as an assessment tool, engagement with the arts in the K-12 classroom can offer aesthetic experiences that have the potential to transform the way students encounter the world, engaging the imagination in acts of perception that stir them to "wide-awakeness." Advocates for the arts in education call for a variety of types of…

The aim of this article is to bring attention to an important connection between art education programs and the development of social justice practices in K-16 classrooms. This article is organized into three sections. The first is an analysis of the hierarchical and unilateral approach to education that urban students experience throughout their…

As educators deliberate on how to provide a well-rounded education for all, the idea of working more collaboratively with a range of arts education providers has become increasingly attractive. Allowing outside organizations and individuals to gain access to institutions in a more evenhanded way and create long-term relationships that reinforce…

Art education offers a way to reach students and make schools more relevant for them. Art teachers can create alternative formats that allow students to explore and learn about their lives. Thereby, students and their communities become the focus of the curriculum and students' responses are valued as individual expression. While teaching art in…

While the arts in the United States are themselves often controversial, arts in public schools rarely are. That is to say that teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community members tend to agree that the opportunity to participate in the arts is beneficial to students and to the wider society. Whether discipline-based arts education…