Toward Improvement of Community Life: The History of Arts and Local Development in Cooperative Extension

ABSTRACT The Cooperative Extension System (Extension) is a national organization of approximately 3,000 offices across 70 land-grant institutions that relies on a complex blend of federal, state, and local funding to deliver research-based education, resources, and support to citizens in each state. While Extension traditionally focused on agriculture, health and human sciences, 4-H and youth development, and community development, a collective of Arts Extension professionals also discovered Extension’s long, continuous history of arts engagement. Since the 1920s,Extension personnel have integrated the arts as creative strategies to engage participants through high-quality community efforts. This manuscript is an initial attempt to understand a regional perspective on Arts Extension work. First, the authors provide a chronological overview of the history of Arts Extension within the Midwestern region to explore the nuance of arts integration within the Cooperative Extension system. Then, they shift to highlight current community Arts Extension models in four Midwestern states to establish a preliminary foundation for future understanding of how modern approaches in Arts Extension contribute to local community development.