Artist to Artist Professional Development Program

Founded in 2002, Artist to Artist is a cadre of experienced teaching artists, “translators,” facilitators and emerging teaching artists acting as critical friends to each other. It is an informal collective of individuals from across the states of Minnesota and North Dakota that is actively supported by the Perpich Center for Arts Education, the North Dakota Council on the Arts, Red Eye Theater, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Artist to Artist is grounded on the principle that authentic learning in the arts is the foundation for creating meaningful arts integration in the classroom.                                                                     

Artist to Artist wants to expand the definition of what a teaching artist is and bring a wider variety of teaching artists into the classroom. This includes naming what kind of support and mutual understanding it takes for artists and educators to collaborate in innovative and nontraditional ways.

Artist to Artist as a professional development program uses the power of collaborative inquiry to examine the work that artists do. This allows program participants to develop deeper understandings of artists’ planning, instruction, and reflection strategies. Experienced facilitators guide participants in ways that allow them to share teaching and learning practices with each other, to discover mentoring and partnering opportunities with other teaching artists, and to build bridges to arts organizations and schools.

In practice, members meet to experience first hand an artist’s lesson and then describe back what they experienced using a facilitated reflection protocol. This demystifies and makes visible the often intuitive and extremely complex aspects of teaching by helping participants clearly identify and name what they experience. This process greatly informs the practice of both the presenting and responding artists.

In the context of this work, a protocol is a planning or reflection strategy that helps practitioners to perceive deeply, think critically, and make meaning. Artist to Artist uses protocols to facilitate conversations that follow agreed upon guidelines. Artist to Artist uses various reflective protocols because they allow practitioners to:

—build the skills and culture necessary for collaborative work

—create an environment for respectful, nonjudgmental dialogue

—ensure everyone present has a chance to contribute

—make the most of their time

—hold in-depth, insightful conversations about teaching and learning

For more information about Artist to Artist contact:
Barbara Cox at 763-591-4762, or 800-657-3515
e-mail: barbara.cox@pcae.k12.mn.us

Part of the current mission of Artist to Artist is to contribute to the Teaching Artist Journal.