Jessica Bai ’16, Sarah Barr ’16: Students involved in the Arts are often heard saying that they lack recognition at Episcopal, but recent conversations with teachers and administrators have shown that the issue is a little more complex. Although not primarily known as an arts school, EA has taken numerous strides in promoting the arts in its community. However, equitable funding amongst EA programs is a complex issue.
“There’s an imbalance between athletics and the arts, although the arts play a close second because of real estate. For sports teams you need gymnasiums, you need fields, so when you look at the square footage that involves athletics it’s huge around here,” said Jim Erwin, Head of the Music Department and Upper School Choir teacher. “If you look at the choir room, band room, music lab, arts studio, and the theater, we probably have the second greatest square footage.”
“Some things are more expensive than others. Maintenance of this campus is really expensive compared to art supplies. There’s the budgets, the staff, which costs money, and then the leadership, which costs money,” added Dr. T.J. Locke, Head of School. “In athletics you need athletic directors, you need coaches, you need JV’s, 3rd teams, middle school teams, and it’s just tons and tons of people. With a musical, you might need three or four adults. It’s just different.”
When funding becomes a subject that is too complicated to untangle, the promotion of the arts may be the next step in engaging more community involvement. Erwin aims to highlight the EA arts program more frequently by using EA’s online newsfeed and webpage. In addition, he strives to have more performances on and outside of campus.
“It is exhausting to do night concerts here, but obviously we need to do more of that with off campus field trip performances,” shared Erwin. “The other idea is to have more performing arts events at games like the EA Dance Team during halftime at football games.”
“Specifically concerning music, I think that we need to make the concerts into much bigger events. It would be great to have large numbers of students cheering on their classmates at the spring concert,” agreed James Finegan, EA Orchestra teacher. “We as a music department need to continue to promote the concerts as much as possible, as do the student musicians!”
In the art rooms, EA artists struggle to complete their projects to their desired standards in the face of time. “With the schedule’s forty minute blocks, any teacher in any discipline would benefit from more emphasis and more time given, especially in the arts,” said David Sigel, EA Arts teacher. “I definitely hear kids grumbling about not having access or feeling like they don’t have a lot of support in the arts. The kids and any class would benefit from more time.”
“Arts classes are the most obvious place that you could benefit from longer periods of time,” acknowledged Locke. “We saw what that J-Term Art rEvolution class can do when they have all day long for two weeks. It was amazing.”
Creating a balance of time committed to arts and sports may be a possibility but demands flexibility. “I think we need to continue to find ways to let kids find their passions,” commented Locke. “I was talking to Greg Smith the other day who is playing a sport in the spring but Mr. Clay is allowing the people that are playing a sport to do something with the Sound of Music. So [Smith] will still be able to do both which is really great, so I like that our teachers are flexible, and I love that our coaches are flexible with each other. I think we all honor the well-rounded kids.
Although promoting and creating more time for the arts takes time in itself, the Episcopal Academy is fully aware that the arts provides a basis for student expression. “The arts do so much for a student’s ability to think creatively and critically,” explained Erwin, “In reality, arts programs can’t thrive unless kids do it every year. We have to somehow make kids feel like they can express themselves in the arts freely and openly.”