Once More, Unto the Breach!

This is not my first blog.  Like a smoker going back to the patch over and over to no avail, albeit al reverso, I have put my hand to keyboard now many times to start a blog.  But -- as any accomplished blogger will tell you -- it is not an easy task to stick to.  This time, I have a strategy, if not a plan.  My blog is here, nestled in the warm cuddles of the NMC website, the public face of the community that is as much my home as the one I share with my family.

My plan is to keep posts short and simple.  This one will be the template -- the one I can improve on, or fall back to as baseline.   Friends, Alan Levine foremost, encouraged me to "just start writing" and I have to chuckle.  I write every day!  I write out the whazoo!  I just write old school style -- in papers and monographs and book chapters.  It is this new form that has eluded me.  Then the flash -- Heya!  Write blog posts about what you are already writing and speaking about!  doh!  That shall be the strategy to keep the effort alive.  

So, to the refrain of the stirring words from Henry V, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..."

The NMC is poised to release a white paper very soon framed with this same title, on a topic that Rachel Smith and I have wrestled with now for many months, with colleages Peter Samis and Holly Witchey.  The paper focuses on the disconnect between research showing the tremendous benefits of arts education and the alarming decline of anything resembling it in schools.  Watch this space for an announcement and more on that very very soon.

My next post will look at the Horizon Project and what we've learned over the almost six years of that effort -- new Horizon efforts have taken off in Australia, and one is in the works for museums.  Here is a sampler.