Leadership, Systems & Program Design
Move from vision to implementation. Discover proven frameworks for building and sustaining high-quality arts programs, including capstones, pathways, and school-wide models that support long-term success.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, High School Educators, Art Instructors How do we prepare young artists to move beyond the classroom and into real-world artistic practice? Capstone experiences provide a powerful bridge between arts education and professional practice, allowing students to synthesize training, develop their artistic voice, and present original work to an audience. At Iowa Conservatory (ICON), high school seniors and post-graduate prep student-artists engage in a semester-long capstone project guided by faculty advisors. Students design, research, and produce an original artistic work grounded in a guiding creative question. The process begins with artistic identity exploration, followed by proposal development, scope and production planning, and iterative cycles of research, experimentation, critique, and revision in collaboration with faculty mentors and peers. Each student manages a project budget and participates in a financial literacy seminar focused on the realities of working as an artist, including budgeting, savings strategies, insurance, housing/workspace awareness, and long-term financial planning. The semester culminates in a public presentation that may take the form of a gallery installation, original performance, film project, interdisciplinary production, or curated portfolio. Recent projects have included a mixed-media installation exploring personal memory through architectural space, an original musical theatre work reimagining familiar fairy-tale characters, and a dramatic performance examining family relationships and resilience. This session shares the instructional framework behind the ICON Capstone and explores how structured mentorship, collaborative and interdisciplinary pathways, and real-world applications support student growth. Participants will examine the advising model, financial literacy integration, and planning tools used to guide students from an initial artistic idea to a fully realized public work, leaving with practical strategies for implementing capstone experiences in their own programs.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, High School Educators, School Counselors, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor Studying an artistic discipline is a noble pursuit for any high school student. But what happens when that student leaves the classroom? This session provides a framework for arts educators and administrators looking to prepare their students for life beyond the stage, canvas, or page. We will consider how career and technical education standards can be integrated into arts instruction while maintaining rigorous academic instruction. Douglas Anderson School of the Arts will serve as the model for implementation; this session will consider how three artistic disciplines (Digital Photography, Cinematic Arts, and Creative Writing) leverage university and business partnerships, implement career level certifications, and encourage a consistent contest submission and publication practice for young artists. We will also consider the challenges that come with connecting education disciplines that at times seem at odds while implementing best practices that focus on empowering young artist to graduate high school with the skills necessary to practice their art in sustainable, practical ways.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, School Counselors What does it actually take to transform a traditional school into a thriving arts academy? This session walks participants through the real-world launch of multiple Performing and Visual Arts Academies, beginning with Rees Elementary and expanding to additional campuses within a public school district. Rather than focusing on theory, this session provides a clear, practical roadmap grounded in experience. Participants will explore the full process from vision to implementation, including building stakeholder buy-in, designing high-quality arts programming, staffing strategically, and recruiting and retaining students in a competitive district landscape. A detailed planning and launch timeline will be shared, along with key decisions that influenced early success. The session will also address common challenges schools face when shifting to an arts academy model, including internal resistance, program alignment, and balancing innovation with existing campus structures. Lessons learned across multiple campuses will be shared candidly, along with strategies that proved effective. Attendees will leave with a practical framework, concrete tools, and immediate next steps to begin or strengthen arts academy implementation in their own schools or districts.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), Middle School Educators, High School Educators, College Educators, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor How do we prepare young artists to move beyond the classroom and into real-world artistic practice? How can your team build a meaningful signature program that is as unique as your school and the people that define it? Whether looking to make improvements to existing programs, or building from the ground up, your process will start with identifying the specific institutional and community-based needs that your program will address. But where do you go from there? This workshop will focus on mapping out a development and evolution plan that centers the core values of your school, supports collaboration between stakeholders, empowers faculty and students, and strengthens community investment in the results. As an example of both challenging and productive ways to approach educational program planning, participants will learn about Walnut Hill School for the Arts’ signature January Term program and the innovative and inclusive approaches used in its creation and implementation. Participants will leave with the core tools needed to engage their community in open dialogue around the development process, give their faculty and students the power of choice and representation, and help their school make its signature impact with a program created by those it serves.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Higher Ed Administrators (Deans, Recruiters, Enrollment, etc), Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, College Educators, School Counselors, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor What happens when college students who are exploring teaching are invited into K–12 schools as mentors? This session highlights how schools can partner with colleges and universities to create mentoring experiences that benefit both K–12 students and the future teacher pipeline. In this interactive workshop, presenters will share a model in which college students serve as mentors for middle and high school students through structured, community-based experiences supported by reflection, coaching, and school-university collaboration. The session will focus on what mentorship is in practice for students in arts schools: how mentors are recruited, how their roles are structured, how schools support them, and why these partnerships can be especially powerful for students who need connection, encouragement, and visible pathways into college and creative careers. Participants will explore how near-peer mentoring can help K–12 students build confidence, belonging, and stronger relationships with adults and older students, while also helping college mentors imagine themselves as future teachers. This session connects strongly to the conference theme, Borderless Creativity: Arts Bridging Cultures, by showing how schools can bridge the spaces between K–12 and higher education, between students and future educators, and between community partnership and classroom practice. Attendees will leave with practical ideas for creating or strengthening mentoring partnerships that support students, deepen school culture, and help grow future arts educators.
Recommended for: K-12 School Administrators, Elementary Educators, Middle School Educators, High School Educators, School Counselors, Art Instructors, Academic Instructor In many classrooms, creativity has become something to measure, manage, and standardize. The result is often the very thing we hoped to avoid: student work that looks the same, feels predictable, and lacks authentic voice. As educators navigate scripted curricula, digital platforms, and increasing accountability pressures, both teaching and learning can quietly shift from creative practice to compliance. This session challenges that shift. “Creativity Isn’t a Checklist” explores how over-structuring instruction through rigid rubrics, tightly prescribed tasks, and compliance-driven systems can unintentionally limit both teacher autonomy and student expression. When teachers feel confined to “getting it right,” students begin to do the same. They stop asking, “What do I think?” and instead ask, “Is this what you want?” At its core, this session reclaims teaching as an art form. Just as we expect students to engage in authentic artistic expression, educators must also be empowered to approach instruction as a creative, reflective, and dynamic practice. When teaching is reduced to delivery, the artistry of the classroom is lost, along with the conditions that allow meaningful learning to flourish. Using the metaphor of Plato’s Cave, participants will reflect on how systems can keep both educators and students in cycles of compliance and what it takes to step into more authentic, creative practice. Drawing from leadership and classroom experience in an arts-integrated setting, this interactive workshop connects instructional design, PLC structures, and assessment practices to their impact on creativity, engagement, and student voice. Participants will engage in a hands-on experience that contrasts structured versus open-ended creative tasks, analyze where creativity may be constrained within their own systems, and leave with practical strategies to shift from checklist-driven instruction to meaningful, student-centered learning. By rethinking how we define and structure creativity, educators can remove the invisible barriers that limit expression, creating space for truly borderless creativity, where teaching is an art, and students are empowered to create from who they are, not just what is expected.