Welcome to the National Arts & Learning Collaborative (NALC) at Walnut Hill, Natick, Massachusetts! NALC brings years of experience to bear on arts education programming, services, and advocacy. 

Through the work of its advocacy division, the Massachusetts Arts Education Collaborative (MAEC), NALC is the Massachusetts representative of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network (KCAAEN).

There is increasing consensus on the importance of educating the whole child through a well-balanced curriculum that has the arts in the center of the core curriculum. The habits of mind -- creativity, perseverance, problem solving, and innovation -- that are developed through the various domains of the arts are coming to be seen as essential to the expansion and improvement of the 21st-century workforce as well as college preparation.

NALC believes that education in and through the arts awakens the desire to learn more -- the "craving to comprehend" as the author Herman Hesse describes it. The arts also provide another way of communicating human and aesthetic values, as well as providing valuable venues for socialization, self esteem, and lifelong enjoyment and enrichment.  In this time of educational turmoil, where new ideas are so desperately needed, we believe the arts have the power to significantly transform education. 

Read about our latest symposium on May 27 featuring researchers, school administrators, a demonstration class, performers, and visual arts exhibits.  Congratulations to our newest award winners, who were recognized at the Massachusetts Statehouse on May 27th, 2009.

We are pleased to report the appointment of our new Executive Director, Jonathan C. Rappaport