When questions are our best answers: responding to the impact of COVID-19 on community-based arts education organizations: a special issue of Arts Education Policy Review

Abstract

The details of the COVID-19 global pandemic were the lockdowns, face masks, and video conferences, but the full burden of the pandemic included facing the profound inequities in civic, health, education, and other policies that multiplied the effects of the disease. Between March and September 2020, these effects hit the world of community-based arts organizations broadside, stifling the creative activity for young people across the world. Even as youth-centered arts organizations sought to sustain programs of creative skill building, inquiry, and expression with positive youth development principles, they became food pantries, hot spots, and curbside sources of legal advice and financial aid for struggling families. In making that transition, old habits and assumptions have given way to fundamental questions about the definitions of art, arts education, community, leadership, funding, and policy. This introduction summarizes articles that redefine policy as spanning from individual teaching artist practice to municipal and national procedures. Together, they raise basic questions about the new kinds of organizations and practices that could emerge from the crises of early 2020 – given the will to seize the insights of the pandemic.