Welcome to the mindPOP website! mindPOP is a initiative committed to expanding creative learning for kids and teens in Austin.

During our first year of operation we brought together arts education community members. Four groups met to address issues in the areas of Equity and Engagement, Coordination, Quality Instruction and Impact. Each group brainstormed ideas of how to improve their area with mindPOP support. mindPOP is in the process of implementing these projects:

-          Equity and Engagement: A Scholarship Challenge that provides economically disadvantaged students with private instruction in music, theatre, dance, visual arts or digital arts.

-          Coordination: A searchable database for arts education programs

-          Quality Instruction: Putting on Professional Development Workshops and sending e-mails with short videos modeling a variety of techniques that bring arts into the classroom for both teachers and teaching artists.

-          Impact: A data driven effort to help teaching artists gain access to student data for the students they serve and then offer them the tools to analyze what the data means and how it can be used. We are in the process of establishing a data share agreement with AISD and developing tools to support organizations on their data analysis.

Additionally, this spring mindPOP granted 30 mini-grants to local arts organizations to assist them in addressing the four focus areas.

As the end of August nears and we head back to school, shifting our minds from vacation mode back to work, here is a recent Newsweek article to pique your interest about the state of creative learning and why you, as an active bastion of creativity are needed more than ever. View Summary

Click here to read the Newsweek article.

Click here to read the Qualities-of-Quality- Understanding Excellence in Arts Education. A Report from Harvard’s Project Zero.

We are looking forward to upcoming changes on our website and hope you will come back and visit us soon!

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The mindPOP Roadmap team researched Best Practice strategies that other cities participate in to increase and support creative learning in their cities.

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More than 120 people attended the mindPOP Summit at the Blanton Museum on Tuesday, April 20. The event was organized by the mindPOP Roadmap graduate student team from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin who have been collecting information about Austin-area arts education resources. The afternoon began with an inspirational speech by AISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen about the value of the arts for students, and moved into a series of presentations about arts education model programs, local patterns of access, and activities of the mindPOP Solutions teams who are working on ways to address systemic barriers to making arts education an everyday part of learning.

Margie Reese, former Ford Foundation Officer for Culture in West Africa, provided a set of case studies about how to impact arts education. Mike Henry, Austin’s Poetry Slam master, ended the afternoon with an moving performance reminding the audience what teachers do and what art does to inspire young people.

During the event, participants identified other ways to ensure that Austin students have access to quality arts instruction and that Austin teachers get the resources they need to successfully utilize creative learning techniques in other core subjects. These proposed actions will be incorporated into the next phase of mindPOP work, which includes additional financial support by local arts and education funders to implement solutions.

The event was co-sponsored by Art Alliance Austin, with support from the UT Blanton Museum, RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, Applied Materials, Still Water Foundation, Austin Community Foundation, and the Tapestry Foundation.

Click here to find out what participants are doing to keep the momentum going that will ensure that Austin has the best access to arts education for our young people.

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mindPOP Solutions Mini grants of $1000-$2500 will be awarded to projects that help individual organizations promote the four focus areas of mindPOP Solutions:

-Equity and Engagement

-Impact and Measurements

-Quality Instruction

-Coordination

Preference will be given to organizations participating in the mindPOP Solutions groups. The anticipated average grant allocation will be approximately $1500, depending on the number and quality of the requests. Combined collaborative grants will be accepted.

Please view the Request for Proposal and then submit your application by June 15, 2010 to Brent Hasty at brent.hasty@mindpop.org.

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Event: mindPOP Arts Education Summit

Date: Tuesday, April 20th, 1- 3 p.m.

Location: Blanton Museum of Art, Smith Building

This event is cosponsored by mindPOP and Art Alliance Austin in conjunction with Art Week Austin 2010.

Teachers can apply for substitute release pay stipends by e-mailing your request to stipend@mindpop.org  or look for the link in the “What’s New” section of this page.

A link to the registration is above in the “What’s New” section.

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Fifty-five leaders from arts and education brainstormed the primary barriers to equity in our creative learning system. The pages of ideas sorted into four broad categories we’ve formed into Solutions groups:

IMPACT: How can we know our programs are making difference?

EQUITY AND ENGAGEMENT: How can we involve and retain more kids and their families in creative learning?

QUALITY INSTRUCTION: How can our teaching improve?

COORDINATION: How can we coordinate our efforts to benefit kids?

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Over 100 Austin leaders attended the launch of mindPOP at the Carver Museum on November 3 2009. For it’s kick-off, mindPOP hosted AISD Superintendent Meria Carstarphen whose keynote surprised more than a few in the audience by saying the arts were a core component of her reform agenda. She wants a big hairy audacious goal included in AISD’s strategic plan that expands creative learning opportunities for kids and “finds ways to support and resource arts education for our student body.” Dr. Carstarphen left with new fans in the arts community who admired her wit, her insightfulness and her commitment to the arts. Next, Gigi Antoni the CEO of Big Thought described the transformation of Dallas into a coordinated system by “changing the environment not just the programs.” This bigthinking took ten years to develop, but the change (and resources) were possible with careful planning and the capacity to quantify the impacts. Ken Gladish, CEO of the Austin Community Foundation, set the context for the event, made the young performers from Austin Community Steelband feel 10 feet tall, and shared a poem he created for the event – A very impressive turn. A larger than expected crowd stayed for the mindPOP Roadmap and mindPOP Solutions community conversations, offering interesting insights on their experience. By all metrics, the mindPOP kick-off was a success. Now the work begins!

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Welcome to www.mindpop.org.

mindPOP is an exciting new initiative committed to expanding creative learning for kids and teens across Austin. Our fresh approach brings together arts education programs and funds ideas that help local students become inspired thinkers.

The core elements of mindPOP – exhaustive research, collaborative problem-solving, and unprecedented funding – span two key efforts:

mindPOP Roadmap: Led by University of Texas professor Dr. Deborah Edward and a select team of graduate students, this research effort pinpoints the gaps in access to arts education. These findings will guide the community in creating a first-ever roadmap to solving many longstanding challenges.

mindPOP Solutions: The key to success is to improve collaboration between nonprofit arts education providers, and to make sure they have sufficient funds to take action. Led by Dr. Brent Hasty, mindPOP Solutions organizes nonprofit peer groups to meet with field experts, analyze local obstacles, and identify promising practices. Each group will address a specific barrier to high quality, accessible arts education. Four $25,000 collaborative grants will be available for implementing solutions, as well as several $1000-$2500 mini-grants to individual arts.

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Led by University of Texas professor Dr. Deborah Edward and a select team of graduate students, this research effort pinpoints the gaps in access to arts education. These findings will guide the community in creating a first-ever roadmap to solving many longstanding challenges.

In order for the mindPOP Roadmap to be a success, we need help from the Austin arts community, as well as our general audience. Click here to take the survey, and thank you for participating!

-The mindPOP Team

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How can we involve and retain more kids in creative learning? Solutions: Equity and Engagement will develop solutions to reduce the barriers keeping some groups of kids from participating in creative learning programs (e.g strategies for making programming more relevant or reducing financial barriers required for participation, etc.) Contact us to participate in this group. READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>

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