This week, we focused on Room 13 and alternative approaches to arts education in schools. This was particularly interesting as art when I was in primary school was taught in the traditional way of all pupils having the same end goal and usually the ‘best’ piece of art was the piece that looked the most like the stimulus or brief. This is different now as children in schools are encouraged to create their own images and ideas of how they think their art should look. This way, learners have complete control of their work, this gives the child more sense of purpose and more pride in their work (Adams et al, 2008). This pride in their work encourages them and motivates them to continue with art and create more pieces (Ibid).

In our lecture, we discussed the Room 13 approach to art and creativity. This is a room in a school that has a specialist resident art teacher who helps the children create. This is also an entrepreneurial approach to art within schools as it works as a business and money making system within the school. This is a project that has been ongoing since 1994 in a Scottish school. It has proved as a successful alternative to the traditional approach to arts education (Claire Gibb, 2012).  This sounds like a fantastic idea and I would like to introduce this to my school as I progress through my career, if allowed. This nontraditional approach encourages creativity within schools as well as allowing for children to experience the creative process (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The development of the skill of being creative is necessary as this is seen to be a valuable skill to have in terms of employability (Moeran and Christensen, 2013).

In the art workshop, we used materials around us to create paint brushes to use for our paintings of the Scottish Highlands. Below is a picture of my artwork and paint brush.

On reflection, this was a very clever way to ensure that all paintings are unique and different due to being created with such different tools. Every person had a different looking piece of work as everyone had used an individually created brush.  This demonstrated to me how a simple thing such as spending ten minutes creating our own tools to work with can drastically change the creativity and differences in the class’ work. This is a task that children would enjoy and allow their minds to be creative in ways to produce an instrument that will allow them to continue with their creativity on paper. Materials for this task would not cost a lot as any materials already available within the school or outdoor area can be used to creative the tool.

In drama we discussed and demonstrated how drama classes can be used to teach difficult subjects and social justice issues. This was helpful as it showed another way to teach these lessons in my career without just standing in front of a class talking at my pupils. Getting them involved in drama activities surrounding the topic will allow for a better understanding and engagement in learning (Kokx, 2017).

Overall, integrated arts today was very insightful and taught me how to use these subjects in ways different from how I have experienced in the past. It has also taught me that other subjects like technology or health and wellbeing can be integrated into the expressive arts.

Adams, J (et al) (2008) Teaching Through Contemporary Art: Report on Innovative Practices in the Classroom, London: Tate Publishing.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. [Online] Available: https://moodle.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/36806/mod_resource/content/1/creativity-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.pdf [Accessed: 24 September 2019].

Gibbs, C. (2012)  Room 13: The Movement and International Network :Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Kokx, K. (2017) Effects of Musical Theater Education on the Self Esteem of Middle School Students. Ed.D. Dissertations, Concordia University – Portland.

Moeran, B. and Christensen, B.T. (2013) Exploring Creativity: Evaluative Practices in Innovation, Design, and the Arts. [Online] Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1b1aCgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR8&dq=arts+development+of+creativity&ots=3xWpFb_Yl5&sig=l0cpGjy-iqKIuEv5QIgGoFl_-Dk#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed: 24 September 2019].

This week’s integrated arts workshops were practical and had us doing two very different activities. During the lecture today we looked at how we can read extracts and visualise them to see images. We read the article and illustrated the imagery and any other visualisations we had when reading . This exercise was challenging as the text was of a high level of academics but it was clear to see how this could be done within the classroom with an easier piece of text and what the children could learn from this. This task could be done with books or even song lyrics printed. It taught me that art can be taught through literacy and literacy can provide inspiration for art. This is an important realisation as many lessons can stem from this and could even be a topic in art for a number of lessons. I enjoyed this task as it was not something I had ever done before and was a valuable learning experience.

Being inspired wasn’t just the focus in the first lecture, both the art and drama workshops that followed also had this at the center. During art, we used black ink and black pens along with our hands and fingers to make marks on paper.

We then looked at these marks and focused in on what we saw, from there we added details with pen to create the artwork. This was influenced by the third lesson that the arts teach by Elliot Eisner (2002), in which he says that children see and interpret arts in different ways and can have multiple perspectives on one piece of art.  This exercise made me see how this lesson comes into play when completing a piece of art. This task, although messy, could easily be completed in primary schools as long as precautions were taken regarding washing hands afterwards and protecting uniforms with aprons.  Reflecting on this task today, it has changed by view of art always being a set task to end with a classroom full of very similar art pieces. Today, I realised that art is unpredictable even with everyone following the same brief. No two sheets of  paper after the workshop today looked the same as everyone made their own marks and took different inspirations from each, even though the whole section used the same few resources

After the drama workshop today I am already seeing improvements in my confidence when performing. I hope this same development of confidence would be present in my pupils when continuing drama lessons in school.

The workshops and and lectures today taught me the importance of looking at the work in front of me and taking creative inspirations to create new pieces of art which is something I hope to teach my class and allow them to experience this in the expressive arts.

Eisner, E. (2002) The Arts and the Creation of Mind. Conneticut: Yale University Press.

I walked into my first Integrated Arts lecture with an open mind and not much background information on what to expect for the day or the module.  We had a lecture followed by two workshops, the first workshop in visual arts and the second in drama. The first major thing I learned today is that it is extremely important to build a tolerance to ambiguity. This means, as a teacher, I need to be comfortable with things not always going to plan and being what I had expected or prepared for as things can often be unpredictable in the arts. This is a necessity in teaching as it is not always possible to plan to each second in the school day on how things will go.  On reflection of my previous experience, I think this tolerance  is something I will need to build on and hopefully increase over the module so  I can take it into school on placements as well as a qualified teacher in my career. My tolerance to ambiguity is yet to be tested as I have not yet experienced planning and carrying out a lesson of any sort. Once I start this planning and teaching, my tolerance to ambiguity will be developed and hopefully improved upon as I experience more in schools.

This tolerance began to be developed in our workshops. Our workshops today differed highly, drama was much more practical  whereas visual art had a focus on reflection of other people’s work.

It is important as a teacher to value every pupil’s work and show interest in it to ensure there is no discouragement of creativity (McAuliffe, 2007) which was explained to us in both art and drama today.  Encouraging pupils to be creative not only improves creativity in the expressive arts but has also been shown to help attainment in other subjects. Developing the skills of creativity from experiencing the creative arts has been seen to improve maths skills like problem solving and finding new ways to complete mathematic tasks (Nadjafikhaha, Yaftianb and Bakhshalizadehc, 2011) and has also seen improvements in literacy with advances in creative writing skills (Safford and Barrs, 2005).  Pupils need encouragement and guidance in all subjects and without this, in these expressive subjects, things might not progress as quickly as they would in a subject with lots of teacher direction and motivation (Anning and Ring, 2004). This shows that the teacher plays a role in encouraging the expressive arts and creativity in her class and can be the difference between a lesson where a lot of knowledge was learned and a lesson with not a lot Education Scotland (n.d.).

As an actress today, I struggled with confidence as it was a group of people who I have not worked with or performed in front of before. This struggle will hopefully be something I overcome by the last drama input as an increase in drama knowledge will bring an increase of confidence performing. This struggle with confidence is something that pupils in my future classes may face (Kokx, 2017) and is something I, as a teacher, will need to find ways of improving and developing within my class. When speaking to peers, they told me that they also struggled with confidence in today’s drama workshop as it is new territory for most of us. This is something I will keep in mind when planning drama lessons for my class as they may need encouragement to perform and get involved if they have not done drama before.

After today, I am looking forward to learning more about the expressive arts in primary schools and the benefits studying them can bring to pupils. The expressive arts are not a subject I experienced a lot of in primary school so my knowledge of primary school expressive arts is minor. Today’s lecture and workshops have made me look forward to learning more about how to teach and let the children experience the arts in school.

Anning, A. and Ring, K. (2004) Making Sense of Children’s Drawings.  Buckingham: Open University Press.

Education Scotland (n.d.) Curriculum for Excellence: Expressive Arts Principles and Practice. [Online] Available: https://education.gov.scot/Documents/expressive-arts-pp.pdf [Accessed: 10 September 2019].

Kokx, K. (2017) Effects of Musical Theater Education on the Self Esteem of Middle School Students. Ed.D. Dissertations, Concordia University – Portland.

McAuliffe, D. (2007) Foundation and Primary Settings. In Teaching Art and Design 3-11. London: Continuum.

Nadjafikhaha, M., Yaftianb, N. and Bakhshalizadehc, S. (2011) Mathematical Creativity: Some Definitions and Characteristics. [Online] Available: https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/277811/1-s2.0-S1877042811X00241/1-s2.0-S1877042811029855/main.pdf [Accessed: 10 September 2019].

Safford, K. and Barrs, M. (2005) Creativity and Literacy: Many Routes to Meaning. [Online] Available: https://clpe.org.uk/sites/default/files/Many%20routes%20to%20meaning%20childrens%20language%20and%20literacy%20learning%20in%20creative%20arts%20work_0.pdf [Accessed: 10 September 2019].