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Maverick American maestro Leonard Bernstein once said that “a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

That power to cultivate critical thinking is part of why Bernstein was a champion of arts integration, an innovative approach many educators are exploring these days as a creative way to amplify student learning amid an era of steep learning loss.

Certainly, Mike Stone, a veteran music teacher who cut his teeth on the baritone horn in the fourth grade, is a devotee of the practice. Coordinator of the visual and performing arts with the Bakersfield City School District, Stone is planning to use Proposition 28 funds, which are slated to arrive in schools in February, to bolster his already robust arts education program with 13 new teachers, all devoted to the benefits of art integration. 

In arts integration, students meet dual learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to explore connections between an art form and another subject, say history or science, to gain a more nuanced understanding of both. Stone, who plays in the quartet Brass A La Carte and is also the president of the National Association for Music Education, Western Division, recently made time to chat about why arts integration can spark deeper learning.

Photophoto credit: Ron Christian

Q: Can you give me an example of arts integration in a classroom?

A: An arts-integrated lesson might include students listening to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” a Civil War melody. Students would then learn to play the famous melody on a recorder, followed by a writing assignment on the sacrifices of soldiers who fought in the Civil War. In this example, there could be English language arts, history-social science, and music standards all integrated into the lesson.

Q: How does this kind of cross-pollination enhance learning? 

A: Integrating arts standards in instruction enhances student learning by connecting the dots, so to speak. When we play an instrument, sing, dance or draw, we experience the learning by doing. My experience as a teacher is that such an approach connects cognitive and social realms of learning as students experience the learning firsthand.

It provides a synergetic connection that helps students learn across various content disciplines. Teachers have been using the concepts embedded in integration for many years. As the saying goes, we do not learn in a vacuum.

Q: What are you most excited about with this expansion of arts ed in your district? 

A: I am truly inspired by the learning I have observed in our classrooms this fall. The district invested in 13 new arts teachers who are inspiring our students daily through dance, media arts, music, theater and visual arts. I think the fact that we are early adopters has given us a chance to create a model arts education program for California and the nation. Our music education program has been strong for years; now, we have the opportunity to build access and excellence in all the arts-dance, media arts, music, theater and visual arts. The sky’s the limit.

Q: What is the biggest challenge? Reward?

A: Our biggest challenge will be the recruitment and retention of teachers, since California and the nation are competing for teachers in a market where we have a severe shortage. In fact, with the passage of Proposition 28 in California, I estimate that our state could need over 7,000 credentialed arts teachers over the next year. It will mean that school districts must create arts education jobs where infrastructure, instructional support and scheduling promote a positive work environment where arts learning may thrive. 

The biggest reward? Knowing that our children are getting a top-notch education that will help them succeed in life.

Q: Are all 13 new teachers you have coming on board in Bakersfield part of the arts integration theme?

A: Our teachers teach discrete arts standards, and also work to integrate standards, all while the classroom teacher is in the classroom supporting student learning. There is a collaborative spirit with our arts integration approach. We had training the other day, and the energy in that room was incredible.

Q: What are you doing to boost teacher retainment?

A: I’m working hard to make the teaching environment and the experience of these 13 new teachers as positive as possible because I know I won’t retain them unless they like coming to school. I really value that in our district. Retention of teachers is going to be as important as recruitment.

Q: What’s been the biggest hit with the children so far?

A: I have been in all of those teachers’ classrooms, and the kids are just loving it, especially visual arts. Middle school kids want to be expressive in a safe environment. What I see with our teachers is that they’re getting that opportunity to be expressive and kind of mellow out from a normal, hectic school day. They get to create at their own pace and follow the teacher’s lessons. That’s been very popular. 

Q:What’s it like for you, visiting those new classes?

A: I enjoy visiting our primary classrooms more than any others. Learning is so new to these students, and they are very excited. Their smiles make all the work worth it. I look forward to seeing our young children move through the grade levels over the next few years. I even suspect that our students will do better in school because they are so motivated by their arts teachers. After all, kids who are learning the arts are happy to be at school.

Mumbai: The creator-first, enterprise-ready tool for professional art creation, Layer AI, today announced the successful closing of their first seed round. Round included top serial entrepreneurs and industry legends like Jim Payne, gaming angels like Akin Babayigit, Michele Attisani, and Dilpesh Parmar and gaming VCs like The Games Fund, The Games Syndicate, GFR Fund, Laton Ventures along with other AI/Tech VCs and angels like 500 Global, Elena Silenok, Taimur Rashid. Additionally, the team also got a strategic investment from the US-based top art production and talent house Devoted Studios.

Getting to know the team

Layer, based in San Francisco, is founded by a team of passionate professionals with decades of experience in AI, Gaming, and Computer Vision. Volkan Gurel is the CEO, with a background in engineering and management from MIT, Hunch and Coinbase. Burcu is the CRO and served in multiple client-facing roles across multiple products from ads to game services at Unity & LoopMe. Kuo-chin, PhD is the CTO who recently joined bringing 20 years of experience in computer vision from Appen and XMotors. Finally, Mehmet is a self-taught technical artist and game developer who co-founded and sold Gram Games to Zynga in 2018.

The team strongly believes a compact elite team can out-compete larger players and will expand by staying selective and laser-focused on gaming. They believe that driving significant value to many businesses is critical to their own success, whether they are garage startups or industry giants. They are now hiring for their founding team positions:

What makes Layer unique?

Layer is simply unmatched when it comes to seamless integration into art pipelines and intuitive creator workflows, providing a great user experience and productivity boost. As proven by customer testimonials and detailed case studies, Layer leads the race as the tool of choice for game creators of all skill levels whether they are just starting their journey or have mastered game development. Layer proves any creator can go beyond their imagination and experiment with brand new ideas and art styles. A lot of AI tools today focus on either general use cases and foundational model training, or offer standalone cool features but don’t actually serve the everyday use cases. Most of them are either too complicated or are not designed for multi-disciplinary teams and certainly not enterprise ready.

“Layer supercharges artist teams’ productivity by 240 per cent and helps expedite the delivery of art to meet deadlines,” said  Games United production lead,

“Layer AI supercharged Tripledot’s art creation, 3Xing our production speed and elevating quality. By reducing our reliance on outsourcing studios, we’ve not only saved significant costs but also brought the magic of art production in-house. We’re incredibly excited about this technology and eagerly await further updates. Tripledot Studios VP of creative.

Creators not only can go faster but can also supercharge their imagination. “Our art pipeline is not only faster, the variations Layer provides has been super helpful in increasing our creative potential and exploring brand new ideas”‘ said APPS Teknoloji artist. (more quotes will be available on our website by 10 of November)

Layer already empowers many artists to generate images based on their own art styles, allowing them to seamlessly iterate on these images through its premier AI-assisted canvas. Layer is the only generative AI solution that has been adopted by the teams of world’s largest mobile gaming studios. Layer has a clear direction in style-consistent output quality, speedy generation, and an intuitive interface that’s committed to solving game artists’ challenges using AI.

The CEO Volkan Gurel believed “Just like Web 2.0, Cloud computing or mobile unlocked novel applications that beat incumbents and other startup competitors based on a great product experience, we believe the AI revolution will be no different. AI has unlocked many new applications that will be built on top of this new tech stack and we plan to win by building the best product experience for artists in the enterprise leveraging the power of all the great foundational models and tools released by OpenAI, Meta, Stability AI and others. We’re creator-first, enterprise-ready and will remain model-agnostic”.

What’s ahead?

While Layer is focusing on perfecting 2D generation in games for mobile, then AAA studios, the team is already looking ahead. In the near future, Layer will generate both spine and sprite animations from text, images and other animations and further expand to 3D workflows. Layer will also build integrations into non-gaming workflows like marketing and advertising.

Layer will continue its dedication to style-consistent output quality, seamless workflow integrations that empower and free artists from redundant workflow overheads. “AI unlocked many opportunities for gaming and we want Layer to be the easiest tool to get onboard with and the fastest to ROI, “ said the CRO Burcu Ozcengiz. Layer is already serving numerous top-tier clients like Tripledot, Sciplay, Mag Interactive and hundreds of professional artists since launching in February 2023. Layer is also working to shore up their compliance program and will achieve SOC 2 and ISO certification to further cement the security and reliability of their offering for the enterprise.

“Being deeply rooted in game development we see pivotal changes coming to production with Gen-AI tools coming into play. We are not big fans of the idea of flooding the market with soulless content and Layer.AI sets itself apart by aiming to enhance, not replace, human artistry, liberating creators from mundane tasks. That is what we all believe in. We also like that their focus is on enterprise clients and their real needs for seamless integration into existing production pipelines.” – commented The Games Fund general partner Maria Kochmola.