Week 3

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].

 

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