Arts Partners Collaborates with HOAMC to Bring "Oliver Button is A Sissy."

About Arts Partners:

Arts Partners, affiliated with the national Young Audiences Arts for Learning network, is a comprehensive educational program that integrates visual and performing arts into all areas of the curriculum through the planned use of community cultural resources. Arts Partners inspires creativity and learning by using the arts to enhance the classroom experience for PreK-12 students in collaboration with teaching artists and community cultural organizations. This is accomplished through professional development for artists and teachers, and student participation in arts-in-education activities provided by Arts Partners teaching artists and more than two dozen partnering cultural organizations.

Arts Partners is designed to create a partnership that includes representatives of school districts, teaching artists, and area arts and cultural organizations. Members of the Arts Partners team work together to create a preschool through twelfth grade curriculum that combines classroom study, field trips, performances, workshops and residencies in the visual and performing arts. Arts Partners believes that using the arts for learning allows students to better express themselves, develop higher-order thinking skills, enhance their creativity and strengthen their problem-solving abilities. Arts Partners programs are also designed to promote self-esteem and encourage life-long learning.

Programs and Goals:
We offer a variety of arts-in-education programs that are specifically designed by teaching
artists, curriculum specialists and Arts Partners’ program staff to impact learning for thousands
of students. Arts Partners’ goal is to offer programs that provide arts learning experiences that
lead to young people who:

• Think creatively; make connections between the arts and other areas of learning
• Engage in creative exploration, critical thinking and problem-solving
• Understand and use artistic skills and techniques
• Work collaboratively and have an appreciation and respect for other culturesThe Wichita Public School District’s long-term commitment to arts education.

The majority of our programs are teaching artist workshops and residencies. The goals are to:

• Engage the students by allowing them to Experience their art form.
• Help the students Understand the art form, how the artist creates it, the cultural context
  and how it connects to the curriculum.
• Allow the students to Create their own art and to talk about their own creative process.
• Help the students Connect this learning experience to other areas of their studies and life.

Because we believe that creative minds make communities better, Arts Partners is dedicated to providing opportunities for students to learn in and through the arts. According to a recent survey conducted by the American Management Association, “executives say they need a workforce fully equipped with skills beyond the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic in order to grow their businesses.” They identified the four Cs, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity as the skills that will become even more important to organizations
in the future. All of these skills can be developed through arts learning. Arts Partners is helping to educate the next generation of creative thinkers who will have a positive impact on our community.
Arts Partners not only provides meaningful arts experiences for thousands of students, we are also supporting and promoting attendance at many of the outstanding arts and cultural organizations in Wichita.