Putting the Arts in the Picture: by Nick Rabkin 2012 Paperback.

Across the country, schools that integrate the arts into the fabric of the school day and across the curriculum defy educational odds and expectations. These schools demonstrate that the arts are profoundly cognitive and engaging and that arts integration is a strategy within the reach of schools even in the poorest communities. Putting the Arts in the Picture makes a powerful and original argument for placing the arts at the center of educational renewal. The authors investigate the success of arts integrated schools and the programs that have supported them, and explain why arts integration has such cognitive power. Putting the Arts in the Picture places arts integration within the long arc of efforts to realize the democratic promise of public education and examines how other nations have mobilized the arts to focus young people’s need to learn and grow. Throughout, the authors suggest practical strategies—for educators, policymakers, school reformers, philanthropists, and parents—that can make arts integration broadly available to the children who need it most.

Nick Rabkin is the executive director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago, a think tank dedicated to the potential of the arts to contribute to the health and vitality of American communities and democracy. 

Robin Redmond is the associate director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago.