We envision a Rhode Island where all children and youth have access to rich and challenging arts learning opportunities in their homes, schools, and communities, thus enabling them to become creative and critical thinkers, effective communicators, responsible citizens, and knowledgeable adults. This mission of the Rhode Island Arts Learning Network has focused and driven our work across the state.

Arts education in the Ocean State is ready to take a quantum leap forward, with an array of resources and supports coming together to assist arts learning in and out of school like never before. The need to examine the role of the arts in education reform was raised at the Brown University/ Providence Journal Public Policy Conference on the Arts, held in February 1997. State policymakers, including then Governor Lincoln Almond, articulated the need for a more systematic look at how the arts are serving the public in Rhode Island, including the education of our children. Through our network structure, we support and connect the three worlds in which children learn--home, school, and community.



Former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Almond established the Task Force on Literacy in the Arts (Executive Order, March 25, 1999), a joint effort of two state bodies – the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE). The Governor specifically charged the Task Force “to examine the relationship between education reform and the arts, and to make policy recommendations on how the arts can have a significant impact on the educational agenda of Rhode Island.”

The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Rhode Island Office of Higher Education, and the Rhode Island Department of Education have worked in partnership on issues of arts and education for over a quarter of a century. This task force presented an opportunity to continue that tradition. Nineteen leaders from the arts, education and business communities were then appointed by Governor Lincoln Almond to serve on this Task Force. The Task Force was chaired by Dr. Warren Simmons, Executive Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.

After 18 months of work, a full report was issued in 2001. [To read the full report, please visit Task Force]
Three goals emerged which are the foundation of the work of the RI Arts Learning Network:

1. All children and youth will have curricular experiences in school that will allow them to demonstrate proficiency in one or more art forms by graduation.
2. All children and youth will have ongoing access to community-based arts learning to enrich and extend their knowledge and skills.
3. All children and youth will have ongoing access to professional arts experiences that are school-linked and community-based.

These goals are in direct response to the findings of the Task Force, that:

1. Arts learning across home, school, and community is critical to the success of Rhode Island’s “All Kids to High Standards” agenda.
2. There is a lack of equity across the state in physical and programmatic access to arts learning opportunities for children and youth, both in and out of school.
3. The state lacks a strong, capacity-building infrastructure that would support quality arts learning opportunities for all young people across the state.
4. In spite of Rhode Island being an arts-rich state, there is no statewide coordination of arts learning for children and youth across the sectors of home, school and community.

As a result of these findings, the RI Arts Learning Network was created, based on existing structures and resources. This infrastructure is ensuring that the goals of the Task Force are met.

The RI Arts Learning Network is already in operation, and has successfully advocated for a new proficiency-based arts graduation requirement that will apply to all students. This is now integrated into the Regents regulations with the force of law. In order to support this change and the state’s educators who must implement it, the Network created proficiency teams in the visual arts, dance, music and theatre. Broadly representative, the teams began in January 2003 to define what proficiency for ‘all kids’ might look like at graduation.

The RI Arts Learning Network (ALN) is also continuing to build an infrastructure to support its goals. The first team, working on continuously defining and assessing proficiency, is comprised of original Task Force participants, as well as additional members from each of the RI arts education associations. The ALN also engaged a team of regional reps -people around the state familiar with, and advocates for, arts learning for all kids in and out of school. The reps have documented the arts learning in their regions found in the Arts Map section of this site. (Click here for Arts Map, to find information about arts learning opportunities and resources.) The reps are also working with regional youth reps, who are helping to engage their K-12 peers in access to arts learning for all. The work of the reps changes as they serve as information resources to the public, help to coordinate learning in and out of school, and solve problems around equity and access. (Click here to contact your regional rep.) And as of September 2006, there is a team of professional arts organizations for the new Arts Passport program, who have provided free access to their events and exhibits for high schools students to use in meeting the graduation requirement. A higher education team also meets periodically.

- ARTS Map
- Defining Proficiency in the ARTS
- Regional Rep Contact List
- Full task force report (Printable Downloadable File)