Fifty years ago, Duke Ellington School of the Arts began as vision of its cofounders, Mike Malone and Peggy Cooper Cafritz, to build an institution that would provide world-class arts education to students who would not normally have such opportunity. Yet the power of that concept was not simply that underserved students would have access to the arts or be able to express themselves. It was that those without a voice would be empowered with the skills and the platform to tell their own stories.

They knew an essential truth -- that the revolutionary and moving power of art is not just in the performance, but in the stories that get told.
In Washington, DC, storytelling and change are intertwined. Lobbying, legislation, funding, policy, and programs are driven by storytelling. Who wins and who loses is often defined by who is better at telling. As we explore the future of arts education, we have to come to grips with the growing impact of policy and politics on the future of creativity.

From reductions in arts funding to banned books to increasing censorship to digital distribution to shifting copyright laws to artificial intelligence, the ability to create with freedom and to profit from that creativity is under threat. Yet within that environment also lies a whole new realm of opportunities that will impact how we teach, how students learn, and the very definition of what an arts institution is for the next 50 years.

“Arts at the Forefront of Change,” the Arts Schools Network Annual Conference in October 2024, will explore the extraordinary power of storytelling in the 21st century -- the economy, policies, and politics driven by storytelling and the important role of the arts in shaping not only the culture of the nation and the globe but the future as well.