Announcing partnership between Ingenuity and the Kennedy Center

New partnership between Ingenuity and the Kennedy Center uses big data from major school districts to improve equitable access to quality arts education

CHICAGO — With support from the U.S. Department of Education, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Ingenuity have launched a three-year data partnership to bring the artlook® platform to six Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child cities starting in 2019. Any Given Child is a collective impact initiative that works with communities over the long term to build sustainable arts education programs.

There are many benefits to this partnership.

For the first time, Chicago will join a national community of practice with arts education colleagues and school districts in Baltimore; Jacksonville; New Orleans; Houston; Sacramento; and Portland, OR. By expanding the data and insights of arts education across cities, we can better hone student access locally while also creating a wider national study on arts access in public schools.

Here at home, the partnership will:

• Create a national network of arts education data that, over time, can inform and improve state and federal arts policy and funding;
• Help us understand each city’s successes, needs and challenges, allowing us to learn how to make greater impact at home;
• Make it possible for Ingenuity to refine and improve the artlook® platform to the benefit of Chicago schools; and
• Raise the profile of Chicago Public Schools as a national leader in arts education

Through artlook®, communities will be able to share comparable information with one another about the arts in their schools. The lessons we learn will in turn drive new progress and strategies to ensure that every Chicago student has access to the arts. We believe this rising tide will raise all boats.

Today, more Chicago Public Schools students have access to quality arts programming during the school day than ever before, and artlook® has been a significant driver in fostering partnerships between our schools and arts organizations. As a result, city and Chicago Public Schools leaders, grant-makers, and service agencies all better understand the arts education landscape and work together to use these data to inform decisions on policy, funding, and supports to students and schools.

artlook® is a platform created for, and driven by, the communities Ingenuity serves, and we are dedicated to ensuring that Chicago continues to lead the way on providing the tools needed by our arts education community to benefit our students. We see this change on the ground every day. This important partnership will help us finish the job we’ve started here at home. We are excited to work alongside all of our new, national colleagues to further the impact we have made in arts education thus far—and look forward to sharing new insights and lessons learned in the coming years.