From Stories to Theories of School-Community Arts Partnership: The Case of Austin’s Creative Learning Initiative

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Creativity and Localized Change: Teachers and Coaches Supporting Transformation (Table 6)

Abstract

Partnerships between community arts organizations and schools are fundamental to thriving educational and cultural ecosystems. Yet, we have much to learn about how arts organizations understand, value and organize partnerships with schools, or how to support them. In this case study of Austin’s Creative Learning Initiative, we analyze stories organizations use to make sense of why and how they partner with schools, revealing three orientations to partnership: practice, service and change. Orientations differ significantly in terms of organizing assumptions and understandings of success. Employing Drucker’s notion of The Theory of the Business, we describe how such “useful stories” of partnership could be systematically developed and deployed by organizations as “valid theories of partnership” to guide school-community partnership for good impacts.

Authors

• Adam Papendieck, University of New Mexico

• Brent Hasty, MINDPOP

• Jackson Knowles, MINDPOP