ARTSEDGE

About Us
ARTSEDGE is the Kennedy Center’s free digital platform for teaching and learning in the arts. Our resources -- including lesson plans, guides, audio stories, video clips, games and interactives-- are designed to support active engagement with the arts, in the classroom, at home, and beyond.

The full impact of the program might be measured by considering the ARTSEDGE content reaches more people each day than can be held if we met the maximum seating capacity of every theater in the Kennedy Center complex combined. With our recent redesign of the site, we have expanded beyond our core audience of K12 classroom teachers and arts specialists—our mission now includes bringing arts-centered learning to families, communities, and young people wherever they are.

ARTSEDGE Audio
Through our Web site and other channels (including our featured publisher page in iTunes) we deliver audio stories that bring the arts to life for young people, their teachers and families.

With our producers, we create original content based around themes of interest to young people in classroom and out-of-school environments: studies of specific works of art, art forms or global cultures; topical or calendar events; and stories revealing the creative and artistic connections to big themes and concepts common in education-- like nature, history, or innovation.

Our stories can be solely arts-focused, but also (in fact, typically) connect the arts to another subject area -- like science or history -- to extend their reach across the curriculum. In past pieces, we’ve tied together music and sports, explored art and space, and discovered Abraham Lincoln’s relationship to theater (besides the obvious.)  We work closely with our producers to create pieces that inspire, engage and educate, and are always looking for new producers who can work with us to create amazing things.

ARTSEDGE and PRX
While we have relied on commissioned content for many years, we are working with the PRX teams to help us expand into distributing pre-produced content. It’s an exciting experiment for us.

We are interested in a wide range of non-fiction, arts-connected topics and forms -- documentaries and personal narratives; commentaries on and critical analysis of works of art; profiles of artists, regional art forms and more. We typically look for pieces that are under 15 minutes, but are very open to working with producers to get feature-length pieces classroom-ready.  We are looking for work that is engaging, even challenging for young listeners -- from explorations of ‘the canon’ to a diverse range of contemporary cultural expressions.

One area of particular interest is in youth-produced work -- it’s a place for us to put our ‘mission where our mouth is’ and showcase young artists at work.

For more about this new (for us) approach to content, visit our Purchasing Information page on the right side of this page.