Best Practices for School/Arts

ROUGH EDITED COPY

JFK CENTER

Making the Marriage Work:

Best Practices for School/Arts

Organization Partnerships

AUGUST 26, 2014

4:00 p.m. EDT

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY:

ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC

P.O. BOX 278

LOMBARD, IL 60148

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This is being provided in a roughdraft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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> LISA DAMICO: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Making the Marriage Work: Best Practices for School/Arts Organization Partnerships" I am Lisa Damico, your moderator and webinar organizer. Today's webinar is part of a monthly series that comes out of the office of VSA and Accessibility at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This series addresses topics related to arts, accessibility and education.

If you would like to view live captioning of this webinar, you can follow the link you see on this slide and in the chat box of the control panel located on the right side of your screen.

Before we get started, let's take a moment to make sure you are familiar with the go to webinar control panel on the right side of your screen. If you need to leave the webinar early, you can exit out of the program by clicking on the "X" in the upper right corner. Make sure that you have selected telephone, or mic and speakers to correspond with how you're connected to the webinar. You have the ability to submit questions using the chat pane located near the bottom of the control panel, or, if you would prefer to say the question instead of typing it, you can click on the raise your hand icon on the control panel and I will unmute your microphone.

Your questions will come directly to me, and during the question and answer time at the end of the presentation, I will relay them to our presenter.

I want to emphasize that following the presentation, I will send out a followup Email with a link to the recording of today's presentation, a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, a handout of resources that our presenter has kindly prepared for you all, and a copy of the transcript. So this means you don't need to worry about frantically taking notes during the presentation.

If you are active in social media, I invite you to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also tweet or post about today's webinar using the hashtag#VSAWebinar.

And before I turn it over to our presenter, I would like to let you know about next month's webinar, "Developing University Programs for Arts Students to Learn about Working with Students with Disabilities" that's scheduled for Tuesday, September 23rd, from 3:00 to 4:00p.m. Washington, D.C. time, with Kimberly McCord and Sandra Zielinski from Illinois State University. And with that I will turn it over to Dr.Jennifer Raine, today's presenter. Jennifer, I'm going to switch it over to your screen.

> JENNIFER RAINE: All right. Okay. Hi, everybody. Lisa, are you seeing it?

> LISA DAMICO: I am.

> JENNIFER RAINE: Are we good to go? Fantastic.

Well, thank you so much, and thanks to everybody online for joining us here today for "Making a Marriage Work: Best Practices for School and Arts Organization Partnerships".

So, before you start any new relationship, you need to do some research about your potential partner, and right now, I'd like to do a little bit of research about you. I want to do a quick poll to see who we have here with us today. There should be a poll popping up on your screen, and if you can just complete it right now, that would be great.

> LISA DAMICO: So on your screen, you should see, do you currently work as a... please select all that apply.

Teacher.

Teaching artist.

Arts organization administrator.

School administrator.

Other.

I’ll give you about five more seconds.

> JENNIFER RAINE: We should have had some cool polltaking music.

> LISA DAMICO: If you want to make some music, you can, Jennifer.

> JENNIFER RAINE: Everyone can feel free to make music in their own minds.

> LISA DAMICO: Looks like we've had 95% of our participants have voted, so I'm going to close the poll, and show the results.

So we had 8% say they're a teacher. 24%, teaching artist. 68%, arts organization administrator. Zero percent school administrator, and 16% other.

> JENNIFER RAINE: Fantastic. Okay. So now that I know a little bit about all of you, it's only fair that I share a bit of my profile with you.

So there I am again, Jennifer Raine. I'm a curriculum designer. I work for Urban Arts Partnership in their EASE program, everyday arts for special education.

So I've worked in arts education for over 20 years and I've done a lot of things, including being a teaching artist, an administrator, curriculum designer, program designer, all kinds of stuff, and I've seen a lot of partnerships work, and I've also seen some flounder, so I'm hopeful that I can provide some helpful information. If anybody has any tips or tricks that don't get covered in this presentation, we may have time to get to those in the QA at the end.

And in this webinar, I'll primarily be using the example of a residencybased partnership in which teaching artists from an arts organization are going into a school and working with teachers in the classroom. I've chosen this as my default model just because I feel that in general, it's the mostubiquitous model, although certainly other types of programming are going on, but I do think almost all of what we're covering today will be relevant in not only this model, but other partnership models as well.

So that said, all of you folks who want a happy, productive, longlasting partnership, we do need to start at the beginning. And of course before the marriage, we have the pickup.

Now, you have to make the approach to any potential partner, and the first step, of course, is to see whom it is that you're attracted to. Now, for arts organizations, you may be looking for a school based on their location or their demographics. You also may need to consider their track record and their interest in supporting arts programming. In schools, you'll want to find an arts organization that has a reputation for doing good work, and for doing the kinds of work that your school might need or be interested in.

So no matter how much you really may be attracted to one another as a potential partner, sadly, when courting, there's one thing that really holds true, and that is, it's all about the money.

Funding. A favorite topic.

So this I'll just be clear off the bat. This isn't a fundraising webinar. There are a lot of other resources out there for that to talk about funding, where to find it, where to get it, but of course we need to talk about a little bit because in order to do a project, the money does have to come from somewhere.

So the first thing that I want to talk about in terms of healthy partnership is that wealth is attractive. So having a funding source definitely puts you at an advantage what you're trying to make an effective partnership. Mainly because it means less work for everybody involved. Arts organizations, if you're lucky enough to have a funding source, that's a great approach to make to a school.

A couple of things to think about in that regard. One thing is you may have a funding source and you can go to a school and say we have this funding source, would you like to be involved? That's great. But you also can think about it if you are applying for larger funding sources that may be able to be funding projects in more than one school, you may have schools that you work with on a regular basis, and they could be part of that part of that grant or that funding source. But you also may want to reserve a couple of spots to try to foster relationships with new schools. So it's a nice way. It's always great to be able to approach the organization and say we have this opportunity ready for you. Now, schools, sometimes you're in the position where you have money, too, some schools, which varies widely from school to school. You might have PTA monies or some discretionary monies. You might have a grant or a funder, but in any event, having the money already is definitely puts you at an advantage. Unfortunately, most of us aren't born into wealth, and this is the problem, so if you're poor, here's what we need to do. You need to do your research and fundraise together.

So arts organizations, if you don't have cash in hand, it's going to be a lot easier to form new partnerships with schools if you do the leg work up front. So what I mean by this is you need to do your research and find out what potential funding sources might be applicable to a kind of project that you may be interested in doing with the school. And walking into a school and saying, hey, we'd really like to work with you, and here are some potential funding sources that we've identified, would you like to work with us to develop some ideas and fundraise together. It's a different ask than, hey, we have a project, or we have a service that we provide, do you want to buy stuff from us.

So it's sometimes you can walk in and propose fundraising, and they will want to buy stuff from you, and that's great if that happens, but do your research. Do your homework first, and walk in prepared to offer some suggestions toward potentially building a relationship.

Schools, you can do the same thing. You can identify some potential funding sources, and you can approach the arts organization that you've done your research and think it might be a good fit for your school. You can approach them and ask if they want to fundraise together with you.

One thing to watch out for, beware of gold diggers. So if you are in a fortunate position and this, it could apply both ways, but mainly I'm thinking about this from an arts organization's perspective. If you're in the fortunate position of having funding already, my experience has been that schools are often more responsive when they have some skin in the game. So we all like things that are free. And if, you know, a school is approached, and you say, we have this free money, we can do a project, that's fantastic, and who's going to say no to something free?

But there isn't always the same level of commitment to the project when there's been no commitment of resources on the part of one partner or the other.

So when I'm when I'm structuring a program, either if I have some money in hand, or if I'm creating a budget for a grant proposal or something like that, I always try and identify some ways that the school is going to pony up if I'm working for the arts organization. I try and think of ways that the school is going to pony up something, whether that's inkind in terms of time from an administrator, whether that's some sort of a financial contribution that could come from some funding that they have, or from PTA money, or discretionary funds or whatever they may have, even if it's a small, small part of the grant. If they're paying for if we're doing professional development and teachers are taken out of school and the school has to pay for subcoverages while the teachers are in TD, something like that, anything that puts a little bit of skin in the game for the school, in my experience, takes a is taking a lot less for granted. Free things can be taken for granted, so you really want to make sure that both partners are committed to contributing something to this project.

Okay. So let's move on to the next stage of our relationship.

The dating game.

You need to get to know your partner. So at this point, we're going to say that you either have some money and you need to sort out a plan for what your project is going to look like, or you're going to apply for money together, and you need to sort out a plan for what your project is going to look like. Planning together requires getting to know one another, and the first step toward getting to know someone always involves communication. So good communication, as any number of selfhelp books and daytime talk shows can tell you, is the key to a successful relationship.

So starting from the beginning of the relationship, how do we set up good patterns of communication?

First of all, let's talk about meetings.

So I am a big, big, big advocate of inperson meetings. Now, I love my technology. I'm sitting here with my laptop and my iPad and my phone all surrounding me, and I communicate regularly with lots of people with lots of electronic ways. But here's the thing. You have to meet in person if you're wanting to build a relationship with someone. And onsite if possible. By onsite, I mean at the school site that work will probably be taking place.

So and all stakeholders should meet, and this should happen regularly. By all stakeholders, I just mean we need to make sure that everybody who's going to be affected by a project, and whose help we're going to need for a project knows who the other players are. And this can be school administrators, it can be your principal, your assistant principal, it could be, you know, a coach at your school. It could be, like, the second grade leader. It depends on how your structure works, of course, but, you know, anyone who's going to be involved could be a curriculum coach. Could be from the arts organization, some teaching artists. Could be curriculum designers. Could be the administrators. It could be the secretary. It could be the custodian. It could be the security guard who is at the front of the school. Any people who will have to interact with one another in order for this project to be successful at some point should see the face of people with whom they will be interacting. It's really important.

People are more likely to do for you if they know you. Assuming that you're not a totally awful person, which, if you're on a VSA webinar, it's impossible that you would be a totally awful person. Assuming that you're a decent human being, which we all are on this webinar, people will do for you if they know you. They will be more likely to pick up the phone if they know you're calling. They will be more likely to read your Emails because they have some context in which to place that. So you have to schedule time for this, and you have to make sure that it happens, and that it happens with all the stakeholders. Now, the reason that I advocate meeting onsite at the school, or the place where the thing is going to happen when possible is that there are certain things that you need to find out in terms of your project design, which, let's back up and remember that this is where we're starting to think about project design and how we're going to make a project that works for everybody. There are certain things from an arts organization's perspective that you just need to have eyes on the site to know whether it's going to work or not work. Things like, you know, if you're doing an auditorium show, you need to know how big the stage is. You need to know that there are no wings or backstage that it opens out into a broom closet. Whatever. You need to know exactly what's going on at the school, and the only way to do that is to be on site, and it also allows you to meet more of the people who are going to be involved, because there's never going to be a time when all those people, including the secretary and the custodian and the security guard, they're not going to come out to your arts organization offices, so you need to get out there and see what's going on on the ground in order to make a successful plan.

Okay. So we're having these inperson meetings, phone meetings, if, as a backup, if you can't do an inperson meeting all the time. But then after that, here's the important thing. Email is used to follow up to all meetings. You take notes during the meetings. You then organize those notes into a very clear Email that says what was decided in the meeting. Action items, action items being, of course you all know from taking good notes and having good meeting protocols that action items are things that people are supposed to do. What's supposed to be done. Who's supposed to do it and when it's supposed to be done by and how they're supposed to report that to you. So any action items and what was said in the meeting.

Now, the reason for this is we have all been in those communicationsnafus where we look at each other and we're like, where's that thing, and the other person says, you were supposed to do that thing, and we say no, you were supposed to do that thing. We decided that in our last meeting. And they say no, we didn't. We said you were supposed to do that thing. You don't want to get into that. The Email allows you to put forth what you feel happened in that meeting, and if anyone disagrees or they feel like they had a different understanding of that, then you can get it sorted out so you can everybody is on the same page and knows what's going on.