Conference explores taking the arts into schools
THERE is enough song and cry in South Africa about the value of including arts education in the school curriculum. While some schools have taken the leap to offer their pupils an arts education alongside mathematics and the sciences, the majority of state funded schools have to still make this become a reality.
This week’s conference that will be hosted by the South African chapter of ASSITEJ at the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg is a significant step forward to bring teachers, policymakers, government, funders and curriculum developers together to engage with each other to find ways of how theatre and the arts can serve and support the education system. ASSITEJ is an international organisation of arts education advocates and practitioners.
The international organisation is headed by South African arts education champion Yvette Hardie.
Her credentials are highly respected both nationally and internationally as a theatre-practitioner and as an arts education lobbyist.
The conference in Johannesburg, the first of its kind in South Africa, will pay attention to the needs of teachers, pupils, theatre companies and artists, as well as to the current obstacles to this engagement.
Stakeholders will explore ways of how theatre can be used as an educational tool, both in and across the curriculum.
Funding models will be investigated.
Presentations and workshops by leaders in the field will share their best practices.
The conference hopes to develop a report for government and corporate organisations with recommendation for implementation strategies.
At a similar convention like this conference but held in the US, several leaders of corporate organisations put their weight behind the lobbying for arts education for all children at all levels of school education.
Heading the pack of corporate leaders was co-founder of Microsoft Paul Allen.
“In my own philanthropy and business endeavours, I have seen the critical role that the arts play in stimulating creativity and in developing vital communities. The arts have a crucial impact on our economy and are an important catalyst for learning, discovery, and achievement in our country,” he was quoted as saying.
Annette Byrd, of GlaxoSmithKline’s endorsement, says, “We need people who think with the creative side of their brains – people who have played in a band, who have painted . . . it enhances symbiotic thinking capabilities, not always thinking in the same paradigm, learning how to kick-start a new idea, or how to get a job done better, less expensively.”
An interesting feature of this week’s conference is that it will bring to the speaker’s podium teachers from rural and township schools who without any resources or previous training in the arts have been innovatively resourceful to find ways of including the arts in their classrooms. ASSITEJ will also be launching a resources catalogue at this conference to make it even easier for teachers to access information and networks.
ASSITEJ is not only concerned with bringing theatre, music and dance into the classroom. Its bigger focus is around how music, theatre and dance can be used successfully by teachers to aid their pupils with skills that are needed in the workplace.
An arts-centred education teaches pupils to be flexible. It grows their ability to take risks to solve problems.
It also develops their communication skills. It nurtures their creativity and it encourages them to be innovative.
Most of all, it teaches them to strive for excellence.
These are the kinds of skills that an increasing number of corporate organisations are looking for among their employees. General Electric is one such company which hires many engineers but it values the way in which an arts education compliments the training of its engineers.
“We want young people who can do more than add up a string of numbers and write a coherent sentence. They must be able to solve problems, communicate ideas and be sensitive to the world around them.
“Participation in the arts is one of the best ways to develop these abilities,” General Electric Foundation president Clifford Smith was quoted as saying in his support for the convention on arts education in the US. There is no doubt that the seeds that ASSITEJ will be planting at the conference this week will provide enough impetus for all its stakeholders to start the new academic year in 2013 with a greater sense of motivation and commitment to increase the access that pupils have to the arts. It is also hoped that leaders of corporate organisations in South Africa will add their voices boldly to articulate the value of the arts in nurturing the next generation of employees.
After all, why shouldn’t it happen if creativity is the currency of this century?