The Arts Are Basic process includes three elements:

• Teacher training workshop
• Classroom lessons with the teacher and with Teaching Artists
• Performances for teachers during the workshop and for students during the school year.

The Arts Are Basic workshop guides teachers in learning about the arts. By 'de-mystifying' the arts and the artistic process of making choices, Arts Are Basic helps teachers see the interrelationships between art forms and connections between works of art and the world around them.

Arts Are Basic trains a group of Nebraska artists –dancers, actors, composers and musicians, visual artists and architects–who work as a team with the classroom teacher. The artists and teachers train together in the summer workshop. Summer showcases by the same groups which students will see during the school year form an integral part of the teachers' study. During the school year, an artist and team of teachers meet to develop lesson plans built around performances or other works of art, and alternate teaching in the classroom.

After the performance or viewing of the work of art, the students continue lessons in the classroom, building on what they have seen or experienced and further developing ideas from their earlier work.

Students and teachers benefit from their Arts Are Basic study in many ways. Teachers tell us time and again that the Arts Are Basic training makes a difference in the way they teach in all their subject areas–they feel more confident in letting students explore and develop their own knowledge of a subject.