"Partners in Excellence"
Program to Recognize Exemplary Public School Partnerships

The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts is pleased to announce Partners in Excellence, a major national initiative which will identify and recognize best practices in K-12 arts education partnerships and foster their replication. The program will focus on the processes which lead to the development of exemplary partnerships between arts organizations and public schools. Partners in Excellence is made possible through the generous support of the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation. The program consists of four parts:

• Presentation of 15-20 partnership projects at a national summit conference
• Publication and national dissemination of the conference proceedings
• A training institute for program directors and key staff
• Publication of a guidebook

The Guild invites appropriate arts, cultural and higher education organizations to submit proposals for presentation at the national summit, to be held January 19-20, 2001 in New York City. Organizations may be nominated by colleagues in the field or make inquiries on their own.

Announcing the initiative, Lolita Mayadas, the Guild's Executive Director, said: "We believe successful partnerships are the end result of complex processes which need to be better understood and shared. We are interested in finding out how these processes evolve and how institutions change as the partnership matures. We also want to find out more about programs that strengthen arts skills and/or learning through the arts. This initiative offers a unique opportunity for people from diverse sectors to participate in a focused and candid discourse about their experiences."

Presenters will be selected through a panel review process and will be asked to focus on the accomplishments as well as challenges and
problem-solving strategies relating to long-term collaborations, either community-based or national in scope, between public schools and non-profit organizations. The panel will be seeking examples of progressive development and success within one or more of the following dimensions:

• Ecology, or interrelationships, inherent in partnerships
• Quality of the teaching and learning environment
• Professional development for teachers and artists
• Program evaluation and assessment of student learning

To assist in carrying out this initiative, the Guild has appointed a distinguished steering committee. Chaired by David E. Myers, Director of the Center for Educational Partnerships in Music and Associate Director of the School of Music at Georgia State University in Atlanta, the committee also includes: Ronne Hartfield, Consultant and former Executive Director of Museum Education at The Art Institute of Chicago and of Urban Gateways:

The Center for Arts in Education, also in Chicago; Jane Remer, Author and Consultant; Larry Scripp, Director of the Music-in-Education Program and Research Center for Learning Through Music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston; and Andrea Temkin, Executive Director of the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, California.

The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts is the service organization for a diverse constituency of non-profit, non-degree granting institutions which provide high quality instruction in the performing and visual arts to all persons, regardless of age, race, religion, aptitude or ability to pay. The mission of the Guild is to foster and promote broad access to high quality arts education designed to meet community needs. To that end it provides service, advocacy and leadership for community arts education organizations. The Guild currently represents 275 member institutions serving 300,000 children and adults.

For further information and application materials contact
Jacqueline S.Guttman, Project Director,
Partners in Excellence program or visit our
website: www.nationalguild.org.
Phone: 201/871-3337. Fax: 201/871-7639.
E-mail: jguttman@carroll.com