An Advocacy Visit to Asia
In February 2025, I visited six cities in Asia (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei and Kaohsiung in Taiwan) for 21 events. I was preaching the gospel of teaching artistry in keynotes, workshops and meetings, and the eagerness I found in response was invigorating. I was impressed by the quality of excellent TA work that appeared, in action and in report. My goal was to strengthen the bonds that connect us across all borders, maybe even to excite enough energy to start the process of creating centers for teaching artistry in mainland China and Taiwan, and to celebrate the extraordinary infrastructure in South Korea.
Teaching artists have arisen from the soil of every country, every culture, even though it is called by different names in different places—community artists, participatory artists, social practice artists, citizen artists, and more. Whatever the differences, ITAC/ International Teaching Artist Collaborative which I co-founded in 2012, has demonstrated the field has much more in common; we are one workforce, one community of practice.
The 21 events in Asia were organized by many people, but the key colleagues were Forrina Chen (Founder and Artistic Director of the Art Space for Kids), William Yip (Board Member Beijing Jheng Charitable Foundation, Senior Director, Ximalaya FM), Yonglun Liu (Chair of ITAC’s Leadership Committee) and Steven Liu (Juilliard). They all played key parts in those events—William was heroic as a translator in China. My deep thanks to these friends who activated connections, created opportunities, and enabled me to meet so many new supporters for teaching artistry, many in leadership positions that will enable teaching artistry to bloom.
Some takeaways from my trip.
1. Excellent practice across the region. Westerners may not have heard much about it, but teaching artistry is practiced at a high level in mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan. The work looks like excellent work you’d see anywhere in the West—yes, there are cultural differences, but they are minor. It’s true that teaching artistry as a field is new in China and Taiwan, but even without a title that distinguishes teaching artist from arts teachers or artists, many practitioners have found their way into using the skills and practices we call teaching artistry. They accomplish the same goals as teaching artists in other countries. When I would present the seven Purpose Threads of the Teaching Artist Field, they could identify the thread their work fell into, and they could point to the ones they were eager to develop in their country.
2. New energy to coordinate. The field of teaching artistry doesn’t fall into any single sector of the arts or arts education anywhere. It falls between the cracks, which has historically limited its funding and visibility. In my travels, I found interest from arts center leaders, arts organization leaders, university leaders, educators, from artists and teaching artists themselves. Developing collective projects in the arts that lift all the partner organizations doesn’t happen in China, and leaders realized teaching artistry was a perfect catalyst to launch such an innovative effort. At Wuzhen, an extraordinary tourist resort in a restored historic Chinese village (look it up on the internet; it’s amazing and mostly for Chinese tourists) that has the infrastructure to host the largest and edgiest theater festival in China, there was eager interest in creating an international teaching artist festival. There was caution about government involvement in the growth of teaching artistry in China. In both Mainland China and Taiwan, leaders in the arts and arts education recognized that teaching artistry needs to be supported by a collective effort of stakeholder organization and not individual organizations. I learned that this is unusual there—arts and arts education initiatives tend to be siloed, with one organization driving a program, with a sense of competition toward others. (Less true in Taiwan.) Discussions about this unusual collective effort noted that this could slow down the process, but in the long run, could give teaching artistry much more reach and vibrancy.
3. Youth mental health crisis. At every event on this tour, the issue of youth mental health as an urgent challenge for teaching artistry to address arose spontaneously. In all my years of work travel, I have never before seen such consensus about on a social problem. Certainly, everyone recognizes the environmental crisis as a pressing issue, but it doesn’t arise spontaneously, everywhere, recognized as an immediate crisis for which teaching artists are a valuable solution. On this trip, it was the main reason driving new energy to invest in teaching artistry. This concern, shared around the world, is a huge opportunity for the field.
4. Korean infrastructure. It’s this simple: South Korea has created the largest national infrastructure for teaching artistry in the world because of the government’s commitment. I gave the keynote address to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of government’s progressive Arts and Culture Policy that included creation of KACES (Korea Arts & Culture Education Service). Among its many robust programs, KACES has initiated an active national network of teaching artist development, certifying over 5,000 teaching artists who lead arts classes in 8,000 schools—that’s more than 70% of all elementary, middle, and high schools. Among the more than 30,000 university graduates in arts-related fields each year, over 3,000 get certified. And in 2024, approximately 745 teaching artists were active in about 1,100 community facilities, providing arts education programs to 20,000 people. Fifteen years ago, KACES developed the Dream Orchestra project which supports over fifty El Sistema-inspired youth orchestras. It has expanded to become Dream Arts, which includes 29 Dream Dance and 20 Theater Troupes, with visual arts coming soon. This is the world’s only El Sistema-inspired multi-disciplinary national network of youth development through the arts.
5. Cultural surprises. Every day of this trip included discoveries: the dozens of cosplaying young women in Beijing wearing rented traditional costumes walking and posing around The Forbidden City; the many foods I ate without knowing (and sometimes not wanting to know) what they were; the lack of cash in Beijing (everything is virtual, including the rare street beggar who flashes a QR code for handouts); the generosity of people everywhere. I will note three discoveries in the arts that dazzled me:
1. The Wuzhen Theatre Festival. This visitor resort (about 80 miles from Shanghai) is built around a meticulously restored 16th century water village, originating from a 1,300 year old Qing Dynasty town. The resort has added performance spaces that allow for it to host China’s largest international theatre festival, with 24 productions from 13 countries last year—avant garde works that play to sold out audiences, and events in the streets and theaters. We envisioned a teaching artist conference in this extraordinary setting.
2. At the distinguished and historic Tsing Hua University (near Beijing), I had a packed-house public dialogue with Professor Kai-Ping Peng who is the nation’s leading figure in Positive Psychology. Arranged by my colleague teaching artist and translator William Yip, this event clarified the intimate and promising connection between our two fields. It is almost as if positive psychology presents a professional framework within which the expertise of teaching artists naturally fits. Positive psychology has a global network of prominent professionals, and measurement protocols that provide teaching artists valuable tools to make their social impact visible. This is a linkage I will continue to explore, and I urge teaching artist colleagues to look up and explore positive psychology.
3. National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts hosted two days of workshops with practicing teaching artists and those who run organizations that use teaching artists, and then the “2025 Co-creating the Future International Forum and Workshop on Creative Engagement.” Every one of the packed days at the Weiwuying Centre for the Arts was an abundant delight, but the biggest impact for me was Weiwuying itself. It’s the largest and newest of the three national performing arts centers in Taiwan (with one of the biggest pipe organs in the world), and it embodied my view of the arts in profound ways. Located on a 165 acre city park that replaced a decommissioned military base, the arts center has four performance spaces (and an outdoor area that can gather thousands) and a gigantic single roof that covers many open public areas. These open areas are actively used by residents—I passed tango lessons, K-pop dancing, tai chi groups, the open air piano being played almost all the time, young people hanging out listening to music, families playing together. The park is actively used all day every day. I attended Weiwuying’s 24 Hours of Tchaikovsky marathon, inside and outside the performance halls, and a Taiwan national team baseball game live-streamed to a thousand viewers. The flow of public engagement flowed from the park into and through the arts center so naturally—it was as full an embodiment of the inclusive definition of “the arts” as I have ever seen.
We really are one global community of practice. Every workshop I had with teaching artists, from skilled masters who are as good as any others in the world to beginnings, reinforced how aligned our goals, our understandings, and our practices are. We share the same pleasures, challenges, and frustrations in our careers. Half a planet away, where these artists had never met a Western teaching artist before, we had immediate affinity and recognition. We are one workforce, one community of practice, one sleeping giant of social change who is starting to awaken.