In 1981, the Los Angeles Unified School District was planning to open a new school for the arts. The superintendent, assisted by Joan Boyette of the Music Center Education Division of Los Angeles, invited 12 arts school administrators to meet in Los Angeles in April of 1981 to help in the planning. It was the first meeting of these influential people, who included leaders of the country’s most prestigious arts schools.

• James Nelson, Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, Alabama

• Daryl Chambers, Booker T. Washington High School for the Arts, Dallas, Texas

• William Dickinson, School for Creative and Performing Arts, Cincinnati, Ohio

• Gail Thompson, Educational Center for the Arts, New Haven, Connecticut

• Maurice Eldridge, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Washington, DC

• William Lawrence, English High School of Visual and Performing Arts, Boston, Mass

• Mary Martha Lappe, High School for Performing and Visual Arts, Houston, Texas

• Karen Carroll, Hope High School, Providence, Rhode Island

• Roger Jacobi, Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen, Michigan

• Richard Klein, LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, New York, New York

• Thomas Tews, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, New Orleans, Louisiana

• Jane van Hoven, North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 


At this legendary meeting, the participants were excited to meet others who were in the business of running an arts school. As Jane van Hoven (North Carolina School for the Arts) referred to those early days, "It was a kind of love affair. . . we could not let each other go once we had discovered each other." They knew that they had to continue the conversation, and accepted an invitation from Mary Martha Lappe to meet at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in March of 1982, where they formed a planning committee that later in 1982 at Interlochen, where Maurice Eldridge (Duke Ellington School of the Arts) chaired the meeting.


Representatives from 25 arts schools attended the Interlochen meeting, including David Graham from Scorborough, Ontario, Canada, whose participation heralded the idea of international participation. It was also evident at that meeting that a smaller group would be more effective in creating the new organization. Gene Wenner, then vice president of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA) approached his organization for funds to underwrite the cost of further planning, and NFAA provided the funds that aided the initial organization of the Arts Schools Network (ASN).
 


A final July 1983 planning meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, was the first formal step in creating the ASN. The participants drafted bylaws and appointed an ad hoc committee of officers: James Nelson, president; Jane van Hoven, vice president; William Dickinson, second vice president; and Maurice Eldridge, secretary/treasurer.


In October 1983, when the first ASN conference was hosted by James Undercofler and the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut, representatives from fifty schools attended, far more than the original planners anticipated.  As part of the conference, Joan Hickey, the founder of the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University, hosted the first ASN banquet at her home.

That conference in New Haven formally established ASN, then called NETWORK of Performing and Visual Arts Schools, and later, as voted by the membership at the Toronto 1991 conference, the International NETWORK of Performing and Visual Arts. The participants adopted the constitution and bylaws and voted to make all schools that joined the first year founding members. In addition, participants at that first meeting voted to keep the ad hoc committee of officers in place until the next conference in 1984, keeping James Nelson (Alabama School of the Arts) as the appointed president of the Arts Schools Network. Bruce W. Galbraith of the Interlochen Arts Academy was the first elected president.

From its simple beginnings, the Arts Schools Network has developed into an organization that addresses the needs of more than 300 members in countries around the world. Achieving the vision of its founders, the Arts Schools Network and its annual conference continue to grow and influence the success of arts schools everywhere.