Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein, the co-authors of Sparks of Genius, the 13 Thinking Tools of the Most Creative People, bring you a wide-ranging blog on how funding the arts funds scientific innovation and economic development.
Which arts should we invest in? All of them! While almost all arts correlated with increased success as a scientist or inventor in our study, lifelong involvement in dance, composing music, photography, woodwork, metal work, mechanics, electronics and recreational computer programming were particularly associated with development of creative capital.
Click here to access Artsmarts: Why Cutting Arts Funding Is Not a Good Idea, by Michele and Robert-Root Bernstein.
The one thing they address, that I believe needs a correction is their assertion that Obama’s budget zeroes out arts education at the USDOE. That is untrue. The USDOE is reorganizing arts education into a grab bag category called “Effective Teaching For A Well-Rounded Education.” How much funding will support arts education in that category is hard to tell at this moment, not to mention exactly how it will take shape programmatically. So, zeroed out? Not quite. Changed, but unclear how, is about the best I can make of it for the time being.
I wrote about this last year, and although the exact budget numbers are different in the new budget request, if you want to understand a bit more about how the USDOE is planning to reorganize funding programs like those for arts education, you can click here to read my blog on the matter from last year.
