Myrtlewood Arts Association (Myrtlewood) is a 501(c)(3) corporation established in July of 2006 to support arts education and performance. MAA was founded by a group of education, arts and business professionals in response to the decline of government support of the arts. In the challenging economic climate in Michigan, schools and arts organizations have found it increasingly difficult to fund arts activities in communities. Myrtlewood Arts Association has accepted the challenge of seeking grants, donations, services, and materials to help meet the financial needs of public arts education and community arts organizations in Michigan. Myrtlewood is convinced that arts provide unique avenues of expression and experience that develop minds and improve lives. Arts not only improves the quality of life in a community, it opens doors to understanding among people.

Myrtlewood has a number of projects in conception, but their realization is reliant on the continuing support from public and private contributors.

Myrtlewood is currently engaged in raising money to help Arts Academy in the Woods, a developing public arts high school, provide necessary facilities and equipment for their comprehensive arts program in Fraser, Michigan. The first task, to turn a gymnasium into a viable performance space, was a great success and a perfect example of the kinds of things Myrtlewood hopes to achieve.

Case for Arts Education

Numerous studies have been done that point to a positive connection between Arts Education and citizenship, academic performance, employability, self-esteem, optimism and other desirable effects. While some studies are more conclusive than others, the effect is observable and the State and the Federal Governments have given strong support to the necessity of arts in all secondary curricula. The Federal Department of Education published a study of such research, done in 1999-2000. The executive summary of that document notes that the arts have "received increasing attention as an aspect of education" and are included in the Improving America¹' Schools Act of 1994. Similarly, State Departments of Education have validated the value of Arts Education across the curriculum. In a vision statement, the New Jersey Department of Education clearly expresses the importance of Arts Education.

Recent studies such as Critical Links and Champions of Change provide evidence of the positive correlations between regular, sequential instruction in the arts and improved cognitive capacities and motivations to learn. These often result in improved academic achievement through near and far transfer of learning (i.e., music and spatial reasoning, visual art and reading readiness, dance and non-verbal reasoning and expressive skills, theater and reading comprehension, writing proficiency, and increased peer interaction). Additionally, the arts are uniquely qualified to cultivate a variety of multiple intelligences. (NJ Department of Education Visual and Performing and Professional Standards) In Michigan, the "artistic/creative model" in the newly minted State Curriculum, because "observation, exploration, innovation, problem solving, application, skill development, creation, expression, communication, presentation, demonstration, reflection and analysis before completion all key to the artistic/creative process" (Michigan Merit Curriculum Visual, Performing Applied Arts 6). Arts Academy in the Woods has a rigorous academic curriculum already in place that meets or exceeds state requirements for graduation set forth in the Michigan Merit Curriculum. Elliot W. Eiser, professor of Education and Art at Stanford University and the author of The Arts and the Creation of Mind speaks of the capacity of Arts Education to enhance fundamental learning skills.

First, the arts teach children to exercise that most exquisite of capacities, the ability to make judgments in the absence of rules. There is so much in school that emphasizes fealty to rules. The rules that the arts obey are located in our children's emotional interior; children come to feel a rightness of fit among the qualities with which they work. There is no rule book to provide recipes or algorithms to calculate conclusions. They must exercise judgment by looking inside themselves.

A second lesson the arts teach children is that problems can have more than one solution. This too is at odds with the use in our schools of multiple choice tests in which there are no multiple correct answers. The tacit lesson is that there is, almost always, a single correct answer. It's seldom that way in life.

A third lesson is that aims can be held flexibly; in the arts the goal onestarts with can be changed midway in the process as unexpected opportunitiesarrive. Flexibility yields opportunities for surprise. "Art loves chance. Hewho errs willingly is the artist," Aristotle said. Creative thinking abhors routine. Routines may be good for the assembly line, where surprise is the last thing you want. As our schools become increasingly managed by an industrial ethos that pre-specifies and then measures outcomes, there is an increased need for the arts as a counterbalance. (Eliot Eisner "Three Rs are Essential, But Don't Forget the A Arts")