Art is more than crayons, glitter, and construction paper. It’s more than centers, stations, and rubrics. And while creativity is an important part of the experience, art education goes far beyond it.
Art is education. Through the visual arts, students develop essential life skills such as critical thinking, resilience, flexibility, creativity, reflection, and communication. These skills extend beyond the four walls of the art room, shaping how students learn, solve problems, connect with others, and navigate the world around them. Now more than ever, no algorithm can teach these skills. Art reminds us what it means to be human.
Art teachers are used to being “on an island,” but we don’t have to do it alone. Over the last nine years, more than 13,000 art teachers have shared their experiences through our annual survey. When art teachers partner together, those individual perspectives become powerful evidence of what art programs need, where support is lacking, and why art is education. We need to band together like never before to strengthen our collective voice and validate what we already know in our hearts—that art is the glue that holds us together.
Share your story in the Center for the Advancement of Art Education’s (CAAE) State of Art Education Survey to make a bigger impact together.
Fine arts leaders, we need your story, too! Tell us about your amazing art programs in the Administrator Survey.
Follow The Art of Education on social media and subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you can be the first to get the results. If you’re curious about past stories we’ve shared, take a look at the last five years:
Download and share the Center’s advocacy resources.
To chat about how art is education with other art teachers, join us in The Art of Ed Community!
Articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.
