The Venue is Seoul, 28th May 2010 and delegates from around the world are gathered to discuss arts education. This is the Second World Conference on Arts Education; as UNESCO pushes to impart upon the world, the IMPORTANCE of art education for all.
The first keynote presentation delivered after the opening ceremony was from husband and wife team Michele and Robert Root- Bernstein. Their delivery, "Arts at the Centre" asserted that "because we now live in a creative society, education for creativity is an essential right."
Imagine that! A right- just like the right to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, clean environment. Just like our children having the right to education, shelter, clean water, food.
Arts education forces the sort of innovative creative thinking, which one minister lamented was missing in our entrepreneurial environment.
Fostering creative thinking, from the primary school age assists in development of individual cognitive and creative analysis. The leading thinkers of yesterday, it has been shown; had the ability to think out of the box and come up with all those wonderful postulates and theories and laws of physics, biology , electricity- because each of them performed and artistic discipline of some form or the other. Would we have the helicopter if old Leonardo Da Vinci didn't sketch it?
The presence of an Arts education or not, seriously affects the bottom line of any country. YES! Fuh real! I seem to be hearing echoes of adults who say: " Steups! Why yuh wasting yuh time wid that? That cyah do nuttin for you."
Well folks, lack of a proper arts eduction is why our carnival can't move forward, our culture cannot move forward; our industry cannot move forward. It is why our innovative qualities are lacking.
The Arts have also been seen as THE MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON against social issues facing youth. The Phillipines and Barbados attested this at the conference.
So all we need to do to give Gibbs a little help is to have Arts Facilities for the youth to get involved in. Give them options beyond oils and business.....diversify the thinking to diversify the economy!
Note as well, that the conference discussed that it was not enough to have arts education in schools alone- but that it was important to have community programmes as well! While the school teaches the methods, the after school forums will provide the "entertainment" factor, where youth can use their talent to create freely without guidance. Any artist can confirm that this SERIOUSLY pushes your brain on so many levels.
The Ministry of Education has, in recent years, been introducing the Arts into the Secondary school Curriculum and also slowly into the primary school curriculum. Slowly....very slowly. Having four kids in school, I haven't seen any sort of focus on Art with any of the four.......
There was in fact a "Road Map for Arts Education" put out by the First conference.
Having gone to the Ministry of Education's website, and looked up the Arts Syllabus for both Primary and Secondary Schools, there is quite a lot of the need to integrate multiple disciplines into the school year......yes, expression of the same topic through visual art, music, dance and drama. It is there in the plan, but there seems to be a lot of time taken for the actual implementation.
Hmmmm.....wonder if I could go all Journalist and see if I can get a comment from the Ministry?
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