With participants: Dipti Desai, Joy Episalla, Carmen Fulford, Doug Israel, Robert Sember, Chrysanne Stathacos 

Coinciding with the exhibition Welcome To My World at Artists Space Books & Talks, this forum will address the state of art education in New York Public Schools, particularly considering the middle school level, at which point students are called to make decisions about their future studies. The program brings together artists, educators and policy makers to publically discuss the role and value of the arts in schools, and to address the position of practicing artists within existing and future educational structures. 

The lead participants in this discussion bring specific experiences as artists working in schools, educators charged with school governance, researchers into educational policy and activists working around notions of radical pedagogy. The event will be chaired by Dipti Desai, Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at NYU Steinhardt. Audience members are also invited to contribute to the forum, in the hope that a broader debate will be generated between artists, art institutions with educational programs, and the NYC schools system. 

The forum will seek to address key questions, including: How have the education policies of recent city administrations impacted access to the arts for public school students? Who has access to art education in New York City, and who does not? Has the provision of arts education in New York schools become dependent on its ability to prove economic value and perform to quantitative criteria? What responsibilities do artists and arts organizations have in relation to the arts activities accounted for in schools? How might art education in schools provide the means of creating new convergences between artists, students and teachers, in order to reflect on the contexts around them? 

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