Yet arts instruction in dance, media, music, theatre, drama, and visual arts is necessary to developing the whole child. Today, even though arts are designated as a core academic subject as part of the Common Core curriculum, arts instruction in the Commonwealth is uneven across districts. Some school systems have rich, sequential, and regular arts instruction in every grade. Others have limited or no arts classes.

As a first step to make sure arts education is equally accessible to all children in the Commonwealth, MASSCreative has partnered with Arts|Learning to work with the Board of Higher Education to establish one year of arts education in high school as an admission requirement to the Massachusetts state university and UMASS systems.

Over the past year, Jonathan Rappaport, executive director of Arts|Learning has been compiling research to make this case to the Board of Higher Education. Additionally, over the past two months, MASSCreative and our Action Network have been reaching out to executive directors, board members, educators and administrators, and local businesses to sign onto our letter to the Board of Higher Education. If you know an opinion leader in the arts education field, please encourage them to sign the letter and stay tuned for an update on when we’ll be delivering the research and the letter to the Board of Higher Education.