About Ingenuity

Coupled with increasing pressure to perform in core content areas such as math and literacy, the shortened day leads many district and school leaders to de-emphasize arts education.

Gives individual schools more authority to determine budgets, curricula, and programming, affording schools more opportunities to work with teaching artists and arts organizations to develop unique arts programs.

Supports 60 schools in developing school-wide, curriculum-based fine and performing arts programs.

With the support from The Chicago Community Trust, CPS launches 17 arts demonstration schools that share resources and model sequential instruction in visual arts, dance, theatre, and music.

Local foundations fund a revamped CPS Department of Arts Education, signaling the growing importance of the arts to local civic and CPS leaders.

The Wallace Foundation and RAND Corporation publish Revitalizing Arts Education Through Community-Wide Coordination on the state of arts education, noting that Chicago’s public schools remain weak in planning and provision of the arts. In response, more than 400 representatives from schools, arts organizations, CPS, and local funders participate in the Chicago Arts Learning Initiative (CALI), which calls for better coordination of resources to create sustainable access to the arts for Chicago children.

Ingenuity is founded to carry out CALI’s vision.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the City of Chicago, and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events lead the creation of the first city-wide Cultural Plan in 25 years. In town hall sessions, Chicagoans call for more arts in CPS schools. Ingenuity and community leaders help CPS create the Arts Education Plan, and the Chicago Board of Education declares the arts a core subject alongside traditional academic subjects.

Developed in collaboration with Ingenuity, the initiative provides incentives, accountability measures, road maps, and technical assistance to help schools grow their arts instruction.

The Creative Schools Fund, part of the initiative since 2013, has to date awarded more than $12 million in grants directly to schools.

The Creative Schools Certification is added to the CPS School Report Card, providing parents and community members a quick look at the state of the arts at individual schools.

An online data-mapping platform that equips CPS leaders and educators with arts education data, facilitates partnerships between CPS schools and arts organizations, and, ultimately, helps drive arts resources to underserved students in Chicago.

And prepares to add it to the Chicago Guide for Teaching and Learning in the Arts. The Guide provides a scope and sequence in the visual and performing arts for principals and instructors and serves as a road map to connect curriculum, instruction, and assessment in the arts.

Ingenuity publishes the Arts Partner Standards of Practice, or APSP, for use by the more than 1,100 arts organizations and teaching artists who work with CPS schools. The APSP includes tools and processes to help arts organizations improve arts program outcomes. The APSP also establishes consensus values about how to define, assess, evaluate, and improve the quality of teaching artist instruction.

Ingenuity partners with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child program and Arts Education in Maryland Schools (AEMS) to expand artlook® to six new communities: Maryland; Houston, TX; Jacksonville, FL; New Orleans, LA; Portland, OR; and Sacramento, CA.

Ingenuity and The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) releases a new report to support educators in the arts and other subject areas in their efforts to contribute to students’ social-emotional development: Arts Education and Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes Among K-12 Students: Developing A Theory of Action

Illinois becomes the first state in the nation to include the arts as a distinct, weighted indicator of K-12 success in its state plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act. This indicator is based upon the innovative, data-informed proposal created by the Illinois Arts Indicator Work Group, a statewide work group co-chaired by Ingenuity and Arts Alliance Illinois.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ingenuity launches the Arts Education Response Collective (ARC) and the artlook^® Virtual Learning Library, two groundbreaking initiatives designed to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on the CPS arts education community.

After two years of collaboration by CPS and Ingenuity. This evolved version of the Certification (CSC 2.0) brings increased nuance to the “Access” measures, while adding weight and detail to the “Quality” measures.

Ingenuity celebrates 10 years of transformational impact in arts education, honoring this milestone with an inaugural fundraising event, Ingenuity@10: Igniting Equity in Arts Education. 

These provide each school with detailed data on their CSC 2.0 score, highlight the unique arts strengths in their school, and identify specific growth opportunities to assist schools in improving arts equity for their students and increasing their Certification scores. CSS refers to Creative Schools Fund, Creative Teachers Fund, and Arts Essentials Fund that help schools fund and build long-lasting arts partnerships.

This panel represents a diverse cross-section of arts partners, teachers, and teaching artists who will play a vital role in catalyzing arts education stakeholders around the shared agenda of arts education equity in CPS.

We launched the Lollapalooza Arts Education Fund to distribute $2.2 million between 2021 and 2026 to CPS schools with the least amount of arts access.

artlook®Educator is a CPS and Ingenuity project fueled by the U.S. Department of Education. artlook^®Educator is a platform for CPS arts teachers to network, share curriculum and planning, knowledge, topic exploration, and resources, creating a sense of community among arts teachers.

Ingenuity released its first of a series of Data Snapshots, which provided CPS arts education and stakeholders deeper analysis and insights on arts education in the District and outline the role they can play in helping drive change, action, and advocacy to help to ensure that every child, in every grade, in every school in CPS has access to a high-quality arts education.

Ingenuity evolves its data reporting moves the publication date of the State of the Arts Report in order to utilize data collected within the same school year. Schools can then apply a more immediate approach to addressing opportunities in arts education and implement identified actions and resources to drive a more positive outcome for students.

Ingenuity launches the State of the Arts Dashboard (SOTA), an interactive tool that complements the annual report and enables stakeholders to explore and download filtered Creative Schools Certification data. This data also returns to artlook® profiles for the first time since the pandemic. Ingenuity debuts the State of the Arts: Education Convening and redesigns Creative Schools Roadmaps to provide school leaders with clearer, more actionable planning tools.

Ingenuity releases Inspiring Creativity: 11 Years of Supporting Arts Education, the first Creative Schools Fund impact report, celebrating $21M in investments across 1,300+ grants, 740,000 students, 446 schools, and 75 community areas.

CPS launches Arts Education Plan 2.0: Cultivating Creativity, setting a renewed vision for arts education citywide.