With the new school year upon us, this week we’re turning our attention to arts education. First, Ayanna Hudson, director of Arts Education at the National Endowment for the Arts (and currently acting deputy chairman of Programs and Partnerships), reminds us of the singular role the arts and arts education can play as students return to the classroom. Hudson emphasizes that involvement in the arts not only engages and empowers students, it can also support the social and emotional needs of students during this critical transition and provide a much-needed vehicle for self-expression. Then we explore an example of arts education and its ability to transform students with new media artist and educator Agnes Chavez. Chavez is the founder of STEMarts Lab, which uses the arts to develop science and math skills. Based in Taos, New Mexico, the artists at STEMarts Lab design and create light and sound installations and then build curriculum tools around the art. STEMarts Lab also bring artists into the classroom to work with teachers and provide hands-on workshops both in person or virtually. During the pandemic and virtual classrooms, Chavez responded “to the problem that I was hearing from teachers that the kids were not engaged, that shifting to this online format was just not working. And my question to myself and to my team was, 'How can we use our creativity, our digital tools to come up a more engaging way to reach them?'" In answer, Chavez created a virtual international exchange program that connected a classroom in Taos, New Mexico, with a classroom in Portugal in which the students collaborated on an art installation that had real world and virtual applications. Space Messengers turned out to be a winning formula, engaging students and exciting teachers. As one teacher wrote, “The temptation of creating art and learning some fascinating science from experts around the world, while working with kids from another country, has proven magical for the COVID-battered students…” In this podcast, Chavez tells us about the program, how learning science through art impacts students’ ways of thinking, and the program’s continuing evolution.

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