04/06/2016
Brook McGinnis found a wonderful article about youth in arts. I advise reading it. The list means a lot to me, so I copied it here:
Children and young people (*I think everyone, but young people are often denied a creative role in artistic processes, so they're specified here.) involved in the arts should:
1) have a sense of ownership and control in the process;
2) have a sense of possibility, transformation and change – that the process is not closed with pre-planned outcomes;
3) feel safe in the process, and know that no matter what they do, they will not be exposed to ridicule, relentless testing, or the fear of being wrong;
4) feel the process can be individual, co-operative or both;
5) feel there is a flow between the arts, that they are not boxed off from each other;
6) feel they are working in an environment that welcomes their home cultures, backgrounds, heritages and languages;
7) feel that what they are making or doing matters – that the activity has status within the school and beyond;
8) be encouraged and enabled to find audiences for their work;
9) be exposed to the best practice and the best practitioners possible;
10) be encouraged to think of the arts as including or involving investigation, invention, discovery, play and co-operation and to think that these happen within the actual doing, but also in the talk, commentary and critical dialogue that goes on around the activity itself.
Michael Rosen shares his checklist for how teachers can ensure that arts education is worthwhile for all students