The Future of Arts Education

Bruce Presents: Creative Today, Creative Tomorrow: The Future of Arts Education
For students who revel in self-expression and creativity, last year was an especially dispiriting time. Visual arts, for one, was largely shuffled off to Zoom.

The Bruce Museum will present Creative Today, Creative Tomorrow: The Future of Arts Education, a national roundtable exploring not just where arts education has been, but where it is going.

The roundtable will tackle such questions as: How do we position arts education as a right, not a privilege? How do we turn all the research proving the academic benefits of arts education into a demand for more of it? And what is “arts education” anyway? And who says so?

The event will be co-moderated by Leonard Jacobs, producer of Bruce Presents, and Jeff M. Poulin, founder of Creative Generation, which works to inspire, connect and amplify the work of young creatives who catalyze social change and those committed to cultivating their creativity. Key arts-education leaders comprise the panel: Eric Booth, Matthew Deitsch, Richard Kessler, James Haywood Rolling, Jr., Glenis Redmond, Gabrielle Ruiz, and Dennie Palmer Wolf.

Creative Today, Creative Tomorrow is the 20th installment of the Bruce Museum’s acclaimed speaker series Bruce Presents: Thought Leaders in the Fields of Art and Science. Support for Bruce Presents is generously provided by Berkley One, a Berkley Company.

Bruce Presents producer Leonard Jacobs conceived Creative Today, Creative Tomorrow out of his personal experience with arts education. “I grew up working-class in New York City during tough times economically,” he said in a statement, “but I was privileged to have so much arts at my public school. Today, too many people still see arts education as a disposable frill. We need to talk about why an arts education is the opposite—indispensable—so as to make it a priority for every parent, every teacher and every school.”

Bruce Museum COO and Managing Director Suzanne Lio added, “Education for all but especially for youth is a huge inspiration to our work. As many people know, the Bruce is in the middle of a multi-year renovation and expansion project, and part of the core of this project is imperative to create nearly limitless opportunities to serve young people and their sense of creativity to art and science. If we don’t put arts education front and center now—right now, when it’s truly needed most—then when will we?”