The Mission of ESP
Empire State Partnerships (ESP) is dedicated to identifying, supporting and developing promising practices in collaborations between cultural organizations and schools.  The focus of the project is on the achievement of the New York State Learning Standards and contributing to the improvement of teaching and learning in New York Schools.

The History of ESP
The project was launched in 1996 as a joint initiative of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED).  These agencies united with the goal of raising standards for students and integrating and reinstating the arts into classrooms throughout New York State. ESP is a program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and is fiscally supported by the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

Three Major Components of ESP:

Empire State Partnerships Grants: Since the program’s inception, NYSCA has allocated more than $18 million in granted funds to build and support long-term, in-depth arts education partnerships across the state. The grants are given to projects which pair cultural organizations with schools across New York State. As of July 2007, 164 partnerships have received funding in planning grants of approximately $10,000, and grants for program implementation of up to $100,000.

• These grants have involved over 104 cultural organizations and eight colleges or universities with students, teachers and administrators in 58 school districts across New York State.

• The cultural organizations in partnerships have included art museums, theaters, dance companies, history museums, music companies, nature centers, community organizations, and writing and literacy programs, among others.

• The schools and school districts in partnerships represent elementary, middle school and high schools from across New York State.

• These partnerships have directly involved over 34,000 students and over 1,400 teachers.  The ESP grants have indirectly served many times these numbers.

ESP Office of Partnership Support and Research: For ten years, the ESP Office of Partnership Support and Research (OPSR) - recently renamed from the Professional Development Program - has offered a year-round schedule of activities in an effort to support arts-in-education in New York by building capacity at the assorted ESP sites.  ESP’s Office of Partnership Support and Research is often described as one of the most ambitious and effective professional development programs in the nation.  The program can be broken into the following critical initiatives:

Summer Seminar
An intensive, weeklong retreat held annually for a wide range of participants, including school-based practitioners and administrators, teaching artists and cultural administrators.  The retreat provides dedicated planning time, access to ESP faculty made up of nationally renowned Arts and Education consultants, intensive study of performance assessment, Reflective Practice techniques, integrated curriculum strategies and partnership strengthening techniques. The seminar is open to non-ESP arts-in-education practitioners and annually attracts participants from across the nation.  

Regional Learning and Leadership Networks
Schools and cultural organizations around New York State and across the nation have begun to look to ESP teams for models of successful partnership and practice.  By developing our teams’ capacity as professional developers on a regional level, we will strengthen individual teams’ cases for sustained funding and raise the standard for collaborative work around the state and country. This initiative includes regional meetings and regionally developed professional development offerings.

ESP Website:

The ESP website serves three primary purposes:

1. To inform ESP-funded partnerships about OPSR programs and to provide a central location for disseminating crucial logistical information about OPSR;
2. To build capacity for online discussion and communication, creating a community of New York State arts-in-education voices; and
3. To share the accomplishments and models created by ESP-funded partnerships and by the OPSR itself, with the national and international arts, education and arts-in-education communities.

This website, managed by the Office of Partnership Support and Research, disseminates information about the ESP-funded Whole School partnerships and related initiatives. The content of the website has been developed by ESP faculty and staff, and the site design is the creation of Abe Francis-Fallon of Clientside Design and Consulting. The project was originally initiated in collaboration with NYSED, ArtsWire, BBN Technologies and the Northeast Regional Educational Lab at Brown University.