This truly is a leadership team. All of the members are asked to be fully engaged, participate and take the message out into the district and community. Your Community Arts Team should include the following roles:

Coach: We have found that having a coach guide the efforts creates confidence and capacity within the team. We specifically call this person a coach (rather than a consultant) because they are trained to focus the efforts of the team, clarify in times of confusion, facilitate a group process, and motivate by celebrating successes. They do not give “expert advice” or do the work for the team. There are a number of organizations, in addition to the California Alliance for Arts Education, that train and/or provide arts education planning coaches to assist districts throughout the state of California. [Contact the Alliance for more information.]

Co-Chairs: It is highly effective to appoint co-chairs to lead the meetings of the Community Arts Team. It is suggested that one co-chair be a staff member of the district administration and the other co-chair a leader from the community (a business leader or arts organization leader, for example).

Design Team: The design team is made up of the coach and the co-chairs, and if desired, one other person from the larger team. The design team is responsible for planning/designing each meeting, (the agenda items, the scheduling and the content), de-briefing after each meeting to determine effective next steps, and keeping the overall effort on track.

Click here [XLS: 70KB] to access an Excel template of the Community Arts Team Roster to aid in the identification and recruitment of your planning team members.

For consistency, it is recommended that all members of the team attend every meeting. However, there may be individuals who contribute to a particular aspect of the planning process — such as policy development or budget planning — who will attend only certain meetings. The process is flexible enough to accommodate that as well. We suggest that the total number of people on the team not exceed 25.

A wide range of individual stakeholders and community sectors have an invaluable role to play in creating, implementing, and advocating for high quality arts education programs in your district.

Click here [PDF: 4.99MB] to access the Stakeholder Sectors diagram, which depicts the range of school, community, and government partners with a stake in the district arts program.