Author: Sterling, Carol

Publication Year:

Media Type: Periodical (article)

Summary:

Arts education is good for business. For many business executives, that proposition rings like a leaden tuning fork. Year after year, arts groups camp like mendicants on their doorsteps, seeking support for the local symphony or for yet another struggling, avant-garde theater group. More recently, those with hat in hand are likely to be scrabbling to rescue a school arts-education program that is going under. (from abstract)

Abstract:

Arts education is good for business. For many business executives, that proposition rings like a leaden tuning fork. Year after year, arts groups camp like mendicants on their doorsteps, seeking support for the local symphony or for yet another struggling, avant-garde theater group. More recently, those with hat in hand are likely to be scrabbling to rescue a school arts-education program that is going under.

To be sure, many executives are pleased to respond, whether out of a broad philosophical belief in the value of arts education because they have a child in the school orchestra, or because they believe support for the arts is good corporate citizenship. But seldom do advocates for arts education make their case on business terms. But the arts are good for business, for four reasons:

• Arts education builds the skills businesses need in their employees. The world of work has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Routinized behavior is out, and the ability to adapt, diagnose problems, and find creative solutions - even at the most basic levels of production and service delivery - is now critical
• A healthy culture and a healthy business climate go together. There is no business in the that is not, in some way, dependent on the arts.
• Arts education fosters appreciation of cultural diversity. Art connects us to the past, but it binds us to one another just as powerfully in the present
• Arts and arts education strengthen communities and the businesses in them.

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Private Sector, Cultural Diversity, Arts Education