Situation of the arts; Experience in quality arts education as a tool for social inclusion.

Orlando Graves Bolaños  
   gravesbolanos(arroba)gmail.com

 It is mere ignorance that leads then to the supposition that connection of art and esthetic perception with experience signifies a lowering of their significance and dignity. Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. Instead of signifying being shut up within one’s own private feelings and sensations, it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height, it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events. Instead of signifying surrender to caprice and disorder, it affords our sole demonstration of a stability that is not stagnation but is rhythmic and developing. Because experience is the fulfillment of an organism is its struggles and achievements in a world of things, it is art in germ. Even in its rudimentary forms, it contains the promise of the delightful perception which is esthetic experience.[i]                  —John Dewey

Dewey published “Art as Experience” in 1934, Menuhin was 19 years old and was already completing his first world tour as a professional violinist. As[ii] World War II was coming to an end, 10 years later, Menuhin was well under way to performing over 200 concerts for the allies and in collaboration with the International Red Cross, including performances in those concentration camps where atrocities of the war took place. It is only speculation whether Menuhin was familiar with Dewey’s work, but even from a casual glance, we can easily see that there are similarities in their work. Imagine that at the age of 30, for Menuhin, the experience of introducing his splendid music into such a desolate atmosphere must have been life changing. In fact, there is evidence that those postwar performances were, reflected in the causes that he took upon himself to defend throughout the latter part of his life. Clearly his defense of the impoverished and downtrodden made him a controversial figure, but also highly respected through many recognitions, including the 1997 Prince of Asturias award for Concord along with his friend Mstislav Rostropovich.

Menuhin went on in the early nineties to translate his worldview into a working methodology and infrastructure to provide children with quality art education and experiences which he coined MUS-E®[iii]. MUS-E means “European Music” but over time the meaning has come to signify so much more than that, even Menuhin realized early on in his project that he would need to count on the inclusion of all the artistic disciplines and not just that of music. During this time, Menuhin started three foundations under his name including the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Spain which began its journey in 1998[iv].  Along with the infrastructure, Menuhin[v]  also devised the MUS-E philosophy with a number of objectives in mind. He envisioned mutual knowledge and respect for other cultures through intercultural artistic activity[vi]. The need to establish cohesive and creative social situations and to especially provide the classroom with the spirit and knowledge of the artist as a tool to complement and add to that of the teacher. This art “tool” is centered on the creative process that takes place and how it can be applied to a group’s cohesion and relationships. The tool is also applied to reinforcing academics as varied as mathematics or literature. Although the activities are based on the achievement of artistic goals by the whole group, in some cases we are aware that art can have therapeutic benefits as well. This is, in fact, a collaborative philosophy because; generally speaking there is often a divide between the personalities of artists and teachers. MUS-E overrides the differences that occur between external educators and those that work within the public school system so that difference can be realigned in a positive light. Menuhin was quoted on more than one occasion for asserting that “if we were all the same we wouldn’t have anything to offer one another”.

Therefore, this general philosophy is applied in Spain through the MUS-E program which inserts professional artists from a variety of disciplines; fine arts, music, theater, dance, yoga, traditional martial arts and circus performers. These artists are then inserted into the classroom having in consideration the characteristics of their respective disciplines and how they might be of benefit to the children of that particular classroom.  For example, we all have observed or experienced firsthand the moment in primary education when boys and girls pass through a phase in which they are uncomfortable with the opposite sex, in some cases these attitudes are reinforced, establishing undesirable behaviors later along in our adult lives. Through the program, we can envision the use of dance, where the intrinsic qualities of the discipline such as cooperation and the physical contact would allow us to naturally overcome negative attitudes and behaviors. Imagine when we dance, how natural it is to join hands in choreography, so the creative process allows us to obtain artistic, academic and behavioral goals simultaneously.

In this chapter, I would like to present how the MUS-E program in Spain has evolved based on some of the strengths that make it a worthwhile model for art educators and tendencies that can be observed from my privileged position as an artist working within the organization.

 are three basic characteristics that are essential. First, the continuity of the program, which provides multiple artistic workshops on a weekly basis throughout the school year.  It is curious to note that when Dewey wrote extensively about experience and education, including his 1938 lectures on the issue, he coined the term “experiential continuum”, which are those learning experiences that motivate us to continue on to others. Menuhin was on target, promoting a MUS-E program that allows a child to interact with the arts throughout the school year, within school hours, and for the entirety of his primary schooling. Receiving this artistic instruction throughout the years he is enrolled in that school covering ages from 5 to 12. Quality arts education is always in danger of being discarded from official curricular activities and this seems to be a generalization that fits with the state of education in the western world. So, to provide weekly work sessions with professional artists is a big jump in the quality of artistic education. Schools that participate in the program are all identified by their diversity be it economic, cultural, ethnic, or related to mental or physical disabilities.

Secondly, the artist is working within school hours. This is important to highlight because it allows for a collaborative artistic effort to take place with all the students present, benefiting the largest possible number of children. No one is left out, which unfortunately is a major disadvantage of structuring arts education outside of school hours. Considering “respect for diversity”, “intercultural coexistence” and “teamwork” among the program’s priority objectives it is only natural that the work take place in a time frame that allows us to work with the majority of diversity present in today’s Spanish schools.  Thirdly, we are speaking about external professional artists who dedicate part of their time to collaborate within the schools framework.  Their work as artists’ complements that of the educator establishing a partnership that is ideal, in that it mimics those very same behaviors that we request from the beneficiaries of the program. Principally, teamwork and respect for others. Since children learn from example, the leadership of two distinct role models and their planning is crucial to establishing a road map of creative activity that is engaging, fun, and meets specific needs of that particular classroom. For instance, a classroom of very active children might adjust particularly well to dance but react adversely to the reflexive nature of the visual arts. This is not to say that these children would never come into contact with the visual arts, the mindset is to engage students and to establish a space where active participation and enthusiasm are present. Through the evaluation procedures that take place throughout the school year, collective decisions can be made to steer the group in different directions and towards different artistic experiences. Other unforeseen benefits have appeared from these collaborations, such as an increased use of the arts within the classroom by non-art teachers, as well as an increase in collaborative methodologies and a heightened awareness in pedagogical innovation[vii]. It is also important to note the background of many artists reflects the diversity of Spain’s own multicultural reality as well as that of new immigrants. These diverse artists also bring new definitions of the arts to the classroom and I have found that they are using additional inspiring tools for working with children in applying such disciplines such as Reiki, Gestalt, and Yoga.

Artist-Teacher Relationships

If we pick apart this relationship artist-teacher, at its best, we can observe the core of the foundation’s success. Before children are even present, artists and teachers come together at the beginning of the school year to design and implement the programmed artistic activity; this partnership will continue on through till the end of the year to evaluate as a team the artistic projects that took place, with a focus on the attitude and behavior acquisitions of the participants. This allows for the creative process to serve both artistic and other academic masters. Imagine that we are dealing with a group of adolescents who are participating in the MUS-E program, we might choose with the students a mural project at the beginning of the year, but this would lead us to study the art history of the mural touching on the works of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros. This could be a perfect stepping stone for a teacher to work out a lesson plan on world history. It would also probably lead us to the social history of art and to reflect with the group on the type of message we want to transmit through our collective mural project; simultaneously introducing a value or emotion that would permeate the images of our mural. It would also lead us to design a message that appeals or responds to the schools community, opening up communication between classmates of different age groups and preparing the way to intergenerational collaborations. Trans-disciplinary academics would also be present so that mathematics would be necessary to calculate surfaces and quantities of paint. The work with students would also include an inclusive process that would ensure that all the participants’ ideas be included in the subject matter and in the actual execution of our proposed mural. There would be a democratic process to choose drawings and propose strategies and there would be equal space for modification and general consensus building. Therefore, at the end of the school term we could find ourselves with a mural in which all students have participated fully and where their collective determination has been represented allegorically as a finished product. Some readers might be familiar with other mural making programs; I personally have always been fascinated by the work of Judy Baca who has been at the forefront of mural making with youth in California since the 1970s. I believe she would agree that using the word “teamwork” is not as important as actually taking advantage of the intrinsic qualities of the mural making process to actually be a team. MUS-E has the advantage that one day it can be a mural and another it can promote the same collective spirit through a musical or a short film, we take advantage of the subversive nature of the arts[viii] to provide us with an excuse to work together. This artistic excuse is present in the relationships within the program of the teachers-artists-students, but is also reaches upwards to influence administrators and decision makers.

As the program has evolved in the past 10 years we have found an increase in the level of teacher participation within the artistic session, this latest evaluation cycle indicates 95% of all teachers involved in the program participate actively in the workshops[ix].  This can truly be a refreshing moment for a teacher as they are able to observe their children while an artist is leading the class, allowing them to see their students in a new light. They may observe that some students excel in artistic and creative endeavors over, let’s say, reading or math, this new facet that is exposed to all, enables us to readjust our opinions on the particular student, and surely ties in with Gardner’s groundbreaking work with Multiple Intelligences. Quite possible I am being a little overdramatic to think that the arts will effectively replace all negative connotations that we have attached to out student’s potential[x], however the future of arts programs will necessarily need to achieve this. In any case, there are direct benefits, which have already been clearly detected which include student’s recognition of a tendency to improved self-esteem and increased sociability. Another indirect benefit that comes from the artist-teacher relationship is it also enables teachers the opportunity to learn how to apply the arts to the everyday routine of the classroom.

Let's face it, we adults ask students to behave many times in a way that we adults are incapable of handling appropriately; this can be due to a number of factors including poor communication, lack of empathy… We often desire, as educators a quiet and attentive classroom. Curiously, when you get a group of teachers together they present the very same behaviors that they normally would find sanctionable in their own classrooms. So as teachers participate in the program actively they often have time to see how classroom management is facilitated through the arts. Once again I recur to Dewey on this issue as he discussed more eloquently the ever present preoccupation of every educator on how discipline should be present in the classroom. “Now, the general conclusion I would draw is that control of individual actions is affected by the whole situation in which individuals are involved, in which they share and of which they are co-operative or interacting parts. For even in a competitive game there is a certain kind of participation, of sharing in a common experience.” Clearly MUS-E helps to mediate collaborative energies that help focus children on a more civic minded discipline over that of a top down traditional disciplinary scheme.

Student Relationships

I have stressed the teacher-artists relationship within the program as a cornerstone to success. But how does that benefit the students? Leading by example is fundamental; we do not have to fall into stereotypes like an artist as a bohemian, with long hair or a teacher characterized as an astounding order freak. What can be easily understood is that these individuals come to the table with distinct educational histories and labor experiences that are mutually complimentary. So when a child observes consensus and a generosity among the adults he is working with he will be more apt at emulating his role models. It is also important to note that a diverse student body should find itself in front of a diverse artistic and teaching faculty. Intercultural coexistence within the program is a reality not only because we speak about it but because we live it daily. Returning to the issue, we have a teacher who is with his students perennially, so he knows their background and behaviors. On the other hand we have an artist with an in-depth knowledge of his discipline and the sufficient preparation to put his knowledge to the service of the classroom including the ability to modify or improvise changes on the spot that will benefit the dynamics of the classroom. For this to take place previous meetings must take place but also within the workshops communication is essential. After class and students[xi] objective team analysis must lead us from the emotional experience of art making to the analysis of group behavior. Tough questions must be analyzed. Are we changing attitudes? Are we changing behaviors? Are we creating critical thinkers? Are children more creative or do their social skills improve? How are these lessons applied to learning other curricular subjects such as science and math?

As class comes to an end group analysis takes place leading to how emotions and creativity have altered behaviors and lead to artistic products. MUS-E is able to itself constantly and this is important.

Quality Experience

So as the organization looks to the future, I have some personal impressions that would be applicable to the arts education community in general, at least within the context of Spain and the European Union. Please bear in mind that non governmental organizations in Spain are generally quite young, having and average age of 15, so you could say that many organizations are still in diapers and are somewhat ill equipped to run organizations that do more than just attend to their beneficiaries. This could very possible be because Spain’s NGOs are financed almost entirely by the public administration to a great extent the terms of this funding are so focused on beneficiaries it leaves organizations in a permanent precarious state as they attend to beneficiaries with state funding. Juggling the inevitable ironies of serving underserved sectors of the population with funding from government agencies that should also be actively engaged with these groups.  NGOs have this in common with public schools which share this critical disadvantage in funding and infrastructure to properly inform and report their activities to their constituents. In this day and age with an excess of information circulating around us, a concerted effort to effectively pinpoint those who would benefit from our initiatives is in order, this is a responsibility of our organizations; equally important is to find those allies within the community that can serve as advocates and sponsors to our activities.  Visibility of the artist and his activity is an area of expertise for Gregory Shollette who has worked both as artist and as an academic in collective art groups and activism. Shollette appropriated the scientific term dark matter[xii] to describe the untold number of artists whose work is never recognized or visualized, but sustains economic markets and promotes consumption of the arts, then sustains our latest Hollywood actress or a hip Chinese sculptor just as dark matter defines that which sustains a star in the sky.

Within art education programs such as MUS-E, we need to visualize the work of the children, find publishers willing to publish this work and galleries and theaters willing to help in this campaign for visibility. In Birmingham England we can find an excellent example of this type a focused visibility with the work of Sound Futures[xiii]  where their partnerships enable them to provide professional recording studios for adolescents involved in their programming to achieve a high level of excellence that is then celebrated through publication and events that give the youngsters a boost of self esteem. These public celebrations only enhance the creative process with the community.  Surely these are initiatives that raise awareness and also create tomorrows spectators, through habits witch promote a healthy cultural consumption. Let us recognize both socially oriented art and also promote the consumption needed to properly promote the varying arts industries. As we promote the art and the responsible consumption of art on different levels we are essentially shining a light on those individuals that compose the “dark matter” of the arts.  This requires creativity and arts excellence. In the social sectors there seems to be an unbridled enthusiasm for all things artistic, but this enthusiasm wanes when the conversation turns to the day to day requirements of the artist’s activity on route to excellence. An example of this is “Rhythm is it” 2003 film by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sánchez Lansch to document the work of choreographer Royston Maldoom; who sets out to tell us the story of several youngsters within a group of 250 children and teenagers who have embarked on the preparation of a choreography to be performed to Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and accompanied by the Berliner Philharmoniker. As Maldoom trains his pupils a beautiful story unfolds but the spectator can observe that some students work out of a common gymnasium with inadequate acoustics and flooring. At the same time another group prepares their part in a dance studio with excellent conditions. The attentive spectator cannot help wondering if the inadequate conditions of the first group have influenced their behavior, concentration and general lack of enthusiasm. In fact, these youngsters have been asked to behave like dancers when none of the conditions surrounding them suggest that they are anything but a group of ragtag adolescents embarking on an adventure. The outcome in spite of the setbacks is breathtaking, but only thanks to a tenacious and demanding choreographer. There is always room for a charismatic leader but I suggest that quality spaces and tools are an essential part of artistic excellence, and more easily attainable than charisma.

Parents

There are positive indicators that come from our evaluation process that show 50% of parents questioned “know about and are interested in the program”, and of those with this answer also answered 71% manifest interest in collaborating with the program in the future versus only a 40% interest in involvement with parent teacher organizations.[xiv]  Tapping into this enthusiasm should certainly evolve, with the use of creative and artistic methods. I can envision after school activities for parents taking place at the same time that activities are taking place for students, creating a sort of afternoon cultural center. Intergenerational theater groups and cultural excursions for the whole family on weekends. Creating safe and assuring environments for people to come together is not always easy within school systems where docents and administrators are overworked and are not easily available for after school activities. That is where external organizations and NGOs can help, but it is necessary to focus this apparent leisure activity within the context of the educational goals and not loose sight of the needed communication between all parts involved. We often assume that all of those actors involved are thinking consistently for the best for our children, but this is not enough to make a team that moves forward towards success. Negotiations and decisions will need to be made if a team is to come from all of this.

We need to increase those moments when parents become involved, they need to be invited, they need to have a say in what is to be done and they need to define their position and the way that they will choose to participate but this conversation needs to take place urgently (they are well overdue), and it is my understanding through experience will only start to yield results in a climate of cooperation and understanding that can be achieved through planned artistic experiences.

Just as we look for a space for a professional sort of visibility it is also important to take into account the layers a community directly or indirectly associated with the school. Administrators, neighborhood associations, for-profit companies in the neighborhood, city representation and autonomic representation.

Higher Education

Service Learning activities within the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation Spain have taken place for the past two years and we see indications that this is a positive start to achieving a permanent link to higher education. Service Learning, as we define it, is a space where instruction and training are intimately linked with experience first hand the power of social transformation through the arts with beneficiaries. Through instruction in how the arts can adapt to the MUS-E methodology and how we can apply basic pedagogical concepts, a creative worker can begin to adapt his experience to provide meaningful artistic experiences for children. The next steps would be to provide sufficient evidence to the Academic community that, there is, in fact, a need to prepare artists professionally to use these skills in a variety of educational spaces including community engagement, education, and activism. I would strongly recommend that universities partner with NGOs that have experience in this field. Within this format of collaboration there should be a renewal in the university arts community that recognizes the arts in a social or community context, which lead to rewarding careers in the arts and if they don’t prepare artists for these new fields these positions will be filled with specialists from other fields leaving once again the arts in a weakened state.

Scale

As a child of North America it is impossible for me to avoid comparison. In the past years I have been generally attracted to the work established by the Wallace Foundation and enamored in particular by the work of Big Thought in Dallas. I think most Texans would agree that we are taught to think big and the CEO of Big Thought, Gigi Antoni, has done just that.[xv] Ms Antoni has shared with me her thoughts on scale which require looking to arts management not as a one of a kind piece of artisanry, but in the same fashion as a multinational looks to embark a service throughout a defined market. For Big Thought, they have taken on the objective of providing all children of Dallas with quality arts experiences. This is being done through a citywide consortium that provides services through multiple organizations that makeup a community network, basically achieving a big step in the variety of the offerings and placing it under one roof, facilitating access for all. Although I was wary of such a large scale at first, I have come to be convinced that by emulating characteristics of big business, we are ensuring improved higher standards of quality, because it no longer hinges on how everyone felt at the end of the session but opens up our perspective to what objectives were obtained in the sessions and what tools will allow artist to improve their activity.

I would like to conclude by reviewing four issues that I have mentioned above, with a focus on the future. First of all we, as a collective, as an industry (I am referring to artist-educators) we need to be ambitious, others have discovered quickly the benefits of the arts and we need to be present on all levels of the decision making process in the future, to defend the use of arts and the needs linked to the creative process. We need to start thinking collectively about what we want arts education to look like in the future and what roles the arts will have as a pedagogical tool  20 years from now. I am referring to scale and the need for higher levels of financing from the private sector and improved collaboration among professionals. Collaboration and sectorial improvements will grow out of academic partnerships and an increase in coursework that generates skills related to delivering the artistic and creative experience to all sectors of society. I can envision that this will naturally eliminate stereotypes that hinder the artist’s participation in society and in formal and informal education at present.

As our participation in educational and social sectors grow, and with refined Higher education, we will need to recover lost ground claiming better funding for increased artistic quality. We will need to focus our evaluation and research on the effectiveness and benefits of MUS-E and similar methodologies with special attention to a more detailed understanding of how teaching partnerships work and improve the learning experience for children.

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[i] Art as Experience, John Dewey, p18

[ii] Birth: April 22, 1916 in New York, United States. Death: March 12, 1999 in Berlin, Germany

[iii] MUS-E is both the name for a methodology created by Menuhin in collaboration with both Werner Shmitd Director of the Conservatory in … and //// it is also the title of the program and network of european countries that impart the MUS-e program throughout the world. The MUS-E® programme was thought out in 1993 by the outstanding violinist and humanist Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) and took on practical shape thanks to the efforts of Werner Schmitt, head of the music school of the Bern Conservatory, in cooperation with Marianne Poncelet, Secretary General of the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation. MUS-E® is inspired by the educational musical concept developed by Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967), a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist and teacher.

Kodály’s concept, circulated throughout Hungary, was that music should be part of daily education and be accessible to everyone. Zoltán Kodály encouraged all countries to know their own traditional culture. Yehudi Menuhin extended Kodály’s concept by adapting it to the realities of multiculturalism. While agreeing with Kodály about the importance of singing, he also insisted on the importance of movement, the various senses, the body and the imaginary world in the practice of art from different cultures.

http://www.menuhin-foundation.com/index2.php?option=com_yanc&act=archive&task=view&cid=76&Itemid=95&no_html=1

[iv] The other two foundations are: The Internacional Yehudi Menuhin Foundation established in 1991 and located in Brussels http://www.menuhin-foundation.com/ and the Yehudi Menuhin Stiftung Deutshland established in 1999,  http://www.ymsd.de/index.html  as well a network of MUS-E organiations can be accessed from any of the three foundation web pages.

[v] Mention must be made to Kodaly and his methodology for learning music which is well extended in eastern Europe, we must also give credit to Werner Schmid and XXX for their participation with Menuhin in developing the MUS-E methodology/philosophy.

[vi] Even before the term intercultural coexistence was coined, clearly Menuhin envisioned that the arts would be a primary factor in achieving this type of interaction

[vii] Mention a source to this issue.

[viii] Recomend book.

[ix] The data was wxtracted from the 2007/08 Evaluation Report for the MUS-E program in Spain. Fundación Yehudi Menuhin España.

[x] This argument noticeably ties in which the historic arguments and studies that have influenced art education for decades with Gardner’s multiple intelligences.

[xi] Notes from Fowler: The Correlation with Academic Achievement

The arts and Educational Excellence

Theme 1: The Arts can foster the development of students who are actively engaged in learning

Theme 2: The Arts contribute to the development of creative, committed, and exciting school culture of teachers, students and parents.

Theme 3: The Arts play a role in generating a dynamic, coordinated and cohesive curriculum.

Theme 4: The Arts can build bridges, to the larger community, the broader culture, and other institutions.

Theme 5: The Arts can humanize the learning environment

[xii] Please read Shollette’s 2002 essay HEART OF DARKNESS A Journey into the Dark Matter

of the Art World, http://www.gregorysholette.com/books/books_index.html

[xiii] http://www.soundfutures.org/

[xiv] Also extracted form the 07/08 Internal evaluation report of MUS-E Spain.

[xv] My ideas for the future of arts education have been particularly influenced by conversations that I was priviliged to have with Gigi Antoni CEO of Big Thought in Dallas, in october 2008.