Why Arts, Culture and Education?
Imagining Place: Mapping New Worlds Exhibition, Fellbach Haus, Kosovo 2024
The fostering of capabilities associated with the arts, culture and education – from engaging in creative expression and reflection to big picture thinking – can provide people with the freedoms, abilities, and agency to respond to and take action in their daily lives. Some of these capabilities, critical to functioning and healthy societies include:
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Children and youth in the twenty-first century need to develop capabilities that enable them to deal with difference, while at the same time empower them to participate in democratic societies. As Pink (2006) notes, ‘the future belongs to a very different kind of person ... creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, meaning makers’. What is called for is a broadening of our understanding of the opportunities, skills and capacities for creating a well-rounded educational experience and citizens of the world[1].
Too often arts education is the sole remaining place in primary and secondary schools where experiential, embodied learning exists and skills developed are not based solely on delivery of factual knowledge. |
Utopia/Dystopia
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Engagement in arts and culture has the potential to activate teaching and learning that moves away from more traditional methods of instruction. Embracing interactive ways of engaging children and youth via experimentation and engagement with a variety of materials and experiences creates opportunities for collaboration, networking, play and stimulation.[2] These kinds of creative spaces encourage the development of cognitive skills, qualitative and relational thinking[3], problem creation[4], and the use of diverse symbol systems[5]. Learning in the arts is also connected to the kinds of knowledge, skills and dispositions identified as necessary for a career and/or college in the twenty-first century including ‘resilience, self-regulation' ... and the ability to experience flow,’ qualities associated with personal success[6].
Animation
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Doodle Bots
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Body Maps
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As well there are many positive and affective outcomes in the arts particularly on attitudinal and behavioral measures[7]. Creating art, for example, requires students to reflect upon and access their own experiences, attitudes and beliefs – learning that moves beyond one ‘right’ answer. When dealing with content that looks at interpersonal, political or economic issues, for example, students have opportunities to explore imagery and the values inherent in such representations. The impact of this kind of work in the arts can profoundly influence ‘student identity, notions of citizenship, [and] beliefs about democracy’[8].
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What the research shows is that there are ‘considerable advantages for youth who are highly engaged in the arts’[9]. These include, in the US context, higher English grades, standardized test scores, lower drop-out rates, higher student self-concept, and positive behavior and attitudes about volunteerism and community service”[10]. Individual and collective art projects ask students to engage in self-expression as well as to participate in collaborative productions that necessitate moving beyond established comfort zones. When students negotiate design decisions in a collaborative wall mural or participate in classroom dialogue regarding a project, there is a ‘responsiveness and interactivity’[11] that is characteristic of political processes in healthy democracies.
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Outside In/Inside Out
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The aim is to provide multiple, intersecting opportunities for the fostering of individual and collective capabilities associated with understanding, insight, and compassion, combined with thoughtful action. The creation of this capability space in art classrooms provides fertile ground for all students, regardless of background, to develop, expand, and to become actors in the world.
As Nussbaum (2010) states, it is ‘the faculties of thought and imagination that make us human ... democracy is built upon the ability to see other people as human beings, not simply as objects’[12].
Artmaking at Alampil RC, Sri Lanka
The fostering of capabilities associated with the arts – from being able to engage in creative personal expression and reflection to big picture thinking, can provide students with the freedoms, abilities and agency to choose lives they have reason to value.
[1] Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books.
[2] Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree Books; Doherty, C. (Ed.). (2009). Situation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[3] Asbury, C., & Rich, B. (Eds.). (2008). Learning, arts, and the brain. New York: Dana Foundation Press; Efland, A.D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.
Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College.
[4] Getzels, J.W. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1976). The creative vision: A longitudinal study of problem finding in art. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
[5] Gardner, H. (1982). Art, mind, and brain: A cognitive approach to creativity. New York: Basic Books; Perkins, D.N. (1981). The mind’s best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[6] Oreck, B., Baum, S., & McCartney, H. (1999). Artistic talent development for urban youth. In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning (pp. 19–34). Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Nussbaum, M. (2006, August 21). Teaching humanity: In our globalized world, an arts education is more crucial than ever as a way to cultivate sympathy for others. Newsweek. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://www.newsweek.com/2006/08/20/teaching- humanity.html
[7] Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Schiefele, U. (1992). Arts education, human development, and the quality of experience. In B. Reimer & R.A. Smith (Eds.), The arts, education, and aesthetic knowing: Ninety-first yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 169–191). Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education; Hanna, J.L. (1992). Connections: Arts, academics, and productive citizens. Phi Delta Kappan, 73, 601–608; Heath, S.B. (1999). Imaginative actuality: Learning in the arts during the nonschool hours. In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning (pp. 19–34). Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L. & Brooks, A. (2004). Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the arts. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
[8] Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College.
[9] Catterall, J. (1997). Involvement in the arts and success in secondary school. Americans for the Arts Monographs, 1(9), 1–11.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree Books; Doherty, C. (Ed.). (2009). Situation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[10] Catterall, J. (1997).
Asbury, C., & Rich, B. (Eds.). (2008). Learning, arts, and the brain. New York: Dana Foundation Press; Efland, A.D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.
[11] Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[12] Nussbaum, M. (2006, August 21).
[2] Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree Books; Doherty, C. (Ed.). (2009). Situation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[3] Asbury, C., & Rich, B. (Eds.). (2008). Learning, arts, and the brain. New York: Dana Foundation Press; Efland, A.D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.
Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College.
[4] Getzels, J.W. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1976). The creative vision: A longitudinal study of problem finding in art. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
[5] Gardner, H. (1982). Art, mind, and brain: A cognitive approach to creativity. New York: Basic Books; Perkins, D.N. (1981). The mind’s best work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[6] Oreck, B., Baum, S., & McCartney, H. (1999). Artistic talent development for urban youth. In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning (pp. 19–34). Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Nussbaum, M. (2006, August 21). Teaching humanity: In our globalized world, an arts education is more crucial than ever as a way to cultivate sympathy for others. Newsweek. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://www.newsweek.com/2006/08/20/teaching- humanity.html
[7] Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Schiefele, U. (1992). Arts education, human development, and the quality of experience. In B. Reimer & R.A. Smith (Eds.), The arts, education, and aesthetic knowing: Ninety-first yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 169–191). Chicago: The National Society for the Study of Education; Hanna, J.L. (1992). Connections: Arts, academics, and productive citizens. Phi Delta Kappan, 73, 601–608; Heath, S.B. (1999). Imaginative actuality: Learning in the arts during the nonschool hours. In E. Fiske (Ed.), Champions of change: The impact of the arts on learning (pp. 19–34). Washington, DC: Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; McCarthy, K. F., Ondaatje, E. H., Zakaras, L. & Brooks, A. (2004). Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the debate about the benefits of the arts. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation.
[8] Freedman, K. (2003). Teaching visual culture. New York: Teachers College.
[9] Catterall, J. (1997). Involvement in the arts and success in secondary school. Americans for the Arts Monographs, 1(9), 1–11.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Perigree Books; Doherty, C. (Ed.). (2009). Situation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[10] Catterall, J. (1997).
Asbury, C., & Rich, B. (Eds.). (2008). Learning, arts, and the brain. New York: Dana Foundation Press; Efland, A.D. (2002). Art and cognition: Integrating the visual arts in the curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.
[11] Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[12] Nussbaum, M. (2006, August 21).
