ADVOCACY A chalk painting festival shared with the public. Photo by James Rees. Rah-Rah for Art Education! A D. Jack Davis common dictionary definition of an advocate is one who pleads the cause of another, or one who defends or maintains a cause or a proposal. If you ask art educators if they are advocates for the arts, you’ll get a resounding “yes.” But, when asked to articulate what they are trying to accomplish with their advocacy efforts, many art educators are often hard-pressed to communicate their issues, objectives, and strategies for effecting change. What Is Effective Advocacy? What most art educators call advocacy is more aligned with being a fan or cheerleader for the arts—enthusiastic and vocal efforts to get people moti-vated and excited about the value of the arts. Effective advocacy is more than that; it is a complex phenomenon that involves many parts and players. As with a sports team, it’s easier to win if you have a lot of enthusiastic supporters. To take the sports anal-ogy further, it takes a multiplicity of people assuming a variety of roles to produce a successful season and a win-ning team: (a) the fans, loyal individu-als who care about the team and are there to cheer them on; (b) cheerlead-ers, who provide important support for the team with their ability to get a stadium full of fans enthusiastic about the game; and (c) the team, and each member of the team is focused on one issue—winning the game. To achieve that, they have a playbook with strate-gies for using it effectively. They do the actual work of playing the game. A Team Effort Effective advocacy in art education needs comparable groups of people. Seldom is any major change effected singlehandedly. A lot of fans and direct the efforts toward achieving an advocacy goal. That person will pro-vide guidance in keeping the efforts positive and upbeat, ensuring that advocacy is not adversarial, but is informative and convincing, helping those who are not on board to under-stand why they should be. A Targeted Focus Effective advocacy in art education needs to be focused on a specific cause or issue and targeted to audiences who can affect the change or provide the support that is desired. It also needs to be well-planned, with objectives and strategies to ensure that the time and effort expended are used effectively to achieve the desired outcome. An advocacy project or effort should be evaluated using predetermined criteria when it is completed. Targeting an Audience At the outset, advocacy team mem-bers need to understand the situation and environment in which they are working. An essential first step is to understand how the targeted audience conducts business, whether it be a city government, a school district, a state legislature, the federal government, a CONTINUED ON PAGE . Effective advocacy in art education needs to be focused on a specific cause or issue and targeted to audiences who can provide the support that is desired. cheerleaders are needed, but a team of advocates who focus on winning is also needed. There are certainly similarities between fans, cheerlead-ers, and advocacy teams, but there are also distinct differences. While it takes a team to plan and complete a major advocacy effort, often a single person will emerge as the team leader or captain and will SCHOOLARTS.COM 11
School Arts Magazine September 2021: Page 11
