Collaborative Members

Cleveland Neighborhood Arts (CNA) Educational Value Statement

Collectively, the nine organizations that comprise the Cleveland Neighborhood Arts represent significant value-added to the education of students and of the community at large. Existing within an environment of profound connection to and collaboration with the communities in which they exist, CNA organizations not only offer programming that lines up well behind ODE Fine Arts standards, but so much more in the bargin. They are uniquely positioned to provide educational platforms for arts curricula that are at once broad and deep while also supporting and/or leveraging holistic approaches to education and interdisciplinary content. CNA organizations do this while also providing a much needed resource for the overall well-being of the students and their communities.

Each CNA organizations enjoys a close, almost organic, relationship with the community it serves. The educators and staff at CNA organizations get to know their students in a more intimate, longer-term and less pressurized enviroment than is typically possible in a school setting. And because the work that CNA teachers do with students occurs outside of the traditional academic frame, they can and do provide important educational opportunities for students that would probably otherwise go unrealized. Within the school setting, students are categorized in a variety of ways by age, by ability, by behavioral tendencies, etc. And while these groupings are certainly necessary and helpful in many respects, they can also have a negative effect on students by limiting them. Students can get trapped in certain behavioral patterns or stuck in certain groupings both of which can keep them from experiencing any real success in, or deeper appreciation for, the arts. Community Neighborhood Arts organizations provide each student a "fresh canvas" on which to create (or re-create) him/herself. The vital out-of-school hours thus become wonderful opportunities to achieve what they may not even have attempted in the school setting. CNA organizations also provide crucially important alternatives to engage harder-to-reach students, and rewards for students needing greater challenges and creative opportunities. Importantly, these opportunitie exist year-round.

Finally, the CNA organizations add value to the educational system in general in two important ways. First CNA organizations provide some relief from the problems of economic inequity. CNA organizations provide access to arts learning and experiences for poor to moderate income individuals and families who lack the financial resources and arts-rich milieu of most suburban famlies or those in more celebrated educational settings. Research studies point to strong relationships between learning in the arts and fundamental cognitive skills and capacities used to master other core subjects, including reading, writing, and mathematics. Studying, experiencing and making works of art benefits students in ther intellectual, personal, and social development; students from economically disadvantaged circumstances should not be further iumpoverished by lacking exposure to the arts. CNA organizations ensure that his will not be the case by creating a wealth of arts programming thorougly resonant with and in support of ODE Fine Arts standards that are available to the communities they serve. Secondly, CNA organizations provide an important training ground for new teachers - especially those just out of college with opportunities to gain arts teaching experience in a community setting.