Limelight Arts: Applying a Holistic Approach to Arts Education

Abstract

For over 100 years, community art centers have supplemented or even replaced arts education in local schools.They help to provide a place where students can learn about the arts, where the community can be enriched, and where artists can work and perform.According to Jessica Hoffman Davis of Harvard University, local community-based art centers can help sustain the arts, particularly in communities where they are marginalized (2010). Especially over the past 20 years, as arts programs in schools have become more endangered, such community centers have helped to fill in gaps.

Generally such centers have been founded for one of two purposes, either to provide classes to children or revitalization for impoverished neighborhoods, generally in school districts where arts education is most often eliminated (Strom 1999). Few, however, seem to serve entire regions or to cultivate the arts in ways that resonate with students. But at Limelight Arts in Philadelphia, amore holistic approach is evident. Limelight Arts not only fills in gaps opened up by the school system, but has created a new way for students and communities to think about the importance of the arts.

Around the country, schools are eliminating arts education programs and relying on partnerships with outside organizations to provide such services (Castaneda and Rowe 2006).Philadelphia is certainly no exception. With nearly 150,000 students enrolled in the over 300 public and charter schools throughout Philadelphia (School District of Philadelphia 2011), and an annual budget of over $2.7 billion (School District of Philadelphia n.d.), a minority of students are receiving a thorough arts education in school. According to the The Philadelphia Public School Notebook, in 2006, 119 (44%) of district-run schools do not have a vocal music teacher, 109 schools (41%) lack an art teacher, and 57 schools have neither (Davis 2006).Programs such as the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program have attempted to mitigate the decline by offering after-school programs, and other initiatives have formed in Philadelphia such as the Settlement Music School (http://www.smsmusic.org/home.php) and the School of Rock (http://www.schoolofrock.com/index.php), but have not substantially counteracted the ongoing demise of in-school arts education.