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| 5th Annual PEAR Conference The Whole Child, The Whole Day Lunch Session Notes: Power of the Arts to Transform Youth Derrick Ashgong (dna@sweetmother.org): The goal of art should not be to promote a (political) campaign Art can increase resiliency, motivate kids to grow up into leaders, challenge thinking and create social change but these things should never be the goal when creating art. The art you are creating has to be you passion, your first priority. (If your goal is to change society/politically motivated you are probably not going to create a work of art that achieves these goals) People should make art. If it turns out that your art has a message that becomes apparent after you finish… GREAT! Creating a message, however, should not be the goal of art. If you want to share/teach art and you are not an artist, FIND SOMEBODY WHO IS AN ARTIST. Find an artist with a view point that is similar to your own… someone who can help you work with kids to create a dialogue about art. Lana Jackson (Boston 2020 Afterschool and Beyond): The goal of Afterschool and Beyond is to connect people with resources to create/shape a landscape so that young people can engage in art. Art education happens 24/7. It doesn’t just happen in the school (if it happens in the school at all). Art education providers need to network so that they can give young people as much as possible… so they can find out what resources and support they can offer each other. Art education providers can barter services, strategize with each other and make themselves visible. There is a lot of good art happening in Boston. We need to share our art so that we can expand art… we need to move out of our comfort area. Janna Schwartz There is an infrastructure behind networking. There is a rich array of work happening, but people are working in isolation. We need to bring people together to connect so that we can bolster and support arts. Doris Sommer (Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard): Harvard is a space for high level training in arts but standard university courses teach art as being ‘outside of the real world’. Art teachers (at a university level) don’t’ want to drag art down with everything else. They don’t want to bring art into the ‘real world’. This is understandable but it lack imagination. It is not realistic and it is not a deep look into art. Art should be messy. Art should connect with the real world. Discussion: Art is transformative: How do we develop/teach creativity (and how do we train teacher to teach creativity)? Make the teaching generative and connect what the art you are teaching to everything else. If you teach photography you are also teaching (or you should be) about perspective and giving kids agency. If you teach theater let kids know the story doesn’t end during the final act. Encourage kids to keep thinking. Make kids lives different. Let them know they’re not ‘stuck’. Art can change passive or destructive behavior. Get kids interested and involved and they will want more and more and more… Art for Art’s sake: There is a problem in our world. There is a lack of ‘art for art’s sake’. Art doesn’t get funded unless it does something… but if the goal of creating art is to do something and not just to create art how good is the art you create going to be? Art education is seen as an ‘extra’ that is not needed. (Motivated parents have fought for art… raised money themselves to fund art programs… does this help (fuels image of art as an ‘extra’ and not an essential part of education… also what happens when parents lose steam and can no longer raise the money to support these ‘extra’ art programs?) or should parents demand that art programs that are removed but put back into education programs (and risk being ignored). Disconnection between professional artists and teachers: There are tensions/disconnections between teachers and professional artists. Art teachers don’t’ get art training. PEAR + Leadership Institute-Piloted a course on arts for teachers. There were full day workshops/training sessions with local artists. The goal of the training sessions/workshops was for the teachers to do art, not to teach art. The goal was to integrate what was learned into the classroom. Reaching pre-service teachers: We need to provide more art training to pre-service teachers (before they get into the classroom and build up habits that may later need to be modified) Mallow & Birchnel (sp?) have research about the need to bring arts into pre-service teacher training. The need for art and the responsibility of artists: Art increases performance on the SATs and stems violence Art can stem violence? “Where there are violent hotspots … there are no art programs” (Lana Jackson) We need a peach and justice movement/coalition… (bostonartsproject@gmail.com) WE ARE ALL ARTISTS… THAT IS NOT JUST A VALUE OF OURSELVES… IT SHOULD ALSO BE A RESPONSIBILITY OF EVERYONE… |
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5th Annual PEAR Conference |