Teaching Artists, artist / educators, community artists are professional artists who teach and integrate their art form, perspectives, and skills into a wide range of settings. Teaching Artists work with schools, after school programs, community agencies, prisons, jails, and social service agencies.The Arts In Education movement grew from the work of Teaching Artists in schools.

Eric Booth has defined a Teaching Artist: “A teaching artist is a practicing professional artist with the complementary skills, curiosities and sensibilities of an educator, who can effectively engage a wide range of people in learning
experiences in, through, and about the arts.”

Additional thoughts on What Is A Teaching Artist may be found on http://www.teachingartists.com/whatisaTA.htm

This term applies to professional artists in all artistic fields.

Teaching Artists have worked in schools and in communities for many decades.
http://nysaae.org/docs/The_History_of_Teaching_Artistry_By_Eric_Booth.pdf.
Philip Lopate. Journal of a Living Experiment, a documentary history of Teachers & Writers Collaborative and the writers-in-the-schools movement. New York: Virgil Press, 1979.
Jane Remer. "A Brief History of Artists in K-12 American Schooling." Teaching Artists Journal, Volume I, Number 2, 2003.
Michael Wakeford. "A Short Look At A Long Past." Putting The Arts In The Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century, Edited by Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond. Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago, 2004.

On April 16, 2011
Th Association of Teaching Artists http://www.teachingartists.com/ convened the First National Teaching Artists Forum. The Forum was held at the Center for Arts Education, in New York.
Leaders in the Teaching Artist field such as Eric Booth, Nick Rabkin, Dale Davis, Richard Kessler, Jane Remer, along with the Association of Teaching Artist Board and the Center for Arts Education staff, brought together and led a group of nearly fifty participants to help advance the work of Teaching Artists http://www.teachingartists.com/TAforum.htm.
External links

• The Association of Teaching Artists
• The New England Consortium of Artist Educator Professionals
• The Chicago Teaching Artists Collective
• Teaching Artists Organized, San Francisco
• The Teaching Artist Journal Website
• The Center for Arts Education
  The center for arts education
  The Center for Arts Education is a nonprofit organization that is committed to stimulating and sustaining quality arts education as an essential part of every child’s education in the New York City public schools. Since 1996, CAE has invested nearly $40 million to support schools and cultural...
  
  http://www.cae-nyc.org/