Teach Arts Collaboration from ground level and avoid the struggle later?

As a parent of a young girl, I want to offer many opportunities for participation in as many activities as possible. When considering all the options available (based on her interests) the harsh reality sets in. How will we find the time? We have physical activities like swimming, dance, gymnastics, yoga. And creative activities such as dramatic play, violin lessons, art, and visual design classes. Did I mention she wants to do everything, and each lesson is approximately 1-hour each week. This equates to 7 additional hours over and above regular schooling and homework. With only afternoons, evenings, and weekends available, I could cram it all in and exhaust everyone involved. Ultimately diluting the quality and experience for my child and having her most likely not enjoy any of the activities due to overstimulation and fatigue.

I envision a future where we focus on more collaborative activities for children. Imagine a 1-hour or bi-weekly lesson where you drop off your child for a collaborative arts activity involving Dance (physical activity), Music (learn an instrument), Drama (scriptwriting) and art (stage design). And all these elements are taught around a singular topic, but you can engage in all four disciplines equally. We start teaching collaboration and understanding of the arts at a young age, so by the time students move into a university setting the concept of collaboration is in place and perhaps wouldn’t be such a challenge to navigate as adults. And it is this problem that I would like to focus my attention towards.

Identify the Problem

The teachings of the collaborative arts combining the likes of dance, drama, music, and the visual arts are missing from many education systems, resulting in future generations of artists and instructors struggling to work together towards designing new course material for a more inclusive and collaborative arts experience. With emphasis always focussed on competition and perfection towards a singular art form, we have disconnected from our storytelling, natural environment, and humanity, which can encompass all art forms at various levels of expertise. We can no doubt find examples of these ideas when following the works of Wassily Kandinsky, (music and art) or Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (dance and music) to name two. If this can be achieved by individuals, why are we not emphasizing these types of collaborative projects with greater emphasis in classrooms for future learning?

We are in a situation where the collaborative arts are under-represented because artists are taught their crafts in silos. Through individual lessons we learn one art form, without being taught the connections or interacting with other art forms. For example, a musician learns about the history of music, composers, musicologists, theoretical notation. And specific to usually one instrument, but not informed about how it may connect to dance, dramatical play, artistic visual representation, society, or the surrounding environment.

The situation continues to perpetuate through schooling systems and universities because all before us have been taught similarly. Those involved include our parents, teachers, instructors, mentors, artists, musicians, designers. The environmental structures from schools to university settings have assumed the study of specializing within a specific area of focus. And while I do appreciate the need for this detail, there is a greater need for a more well-rounded approach towards the creative collaborative arts learning where we can achieve the quality of each discipline while integrating other disciplines with fair knowledge and experience by the time a student enters university.

Reframe the Problem

In 10 years, my news headline should read, “Classroom of tweens demonstrate collaborative art project as each student masters every art form.” Students between the ages 5–10 have been immersed in multiple art forms. The tweens involved can each demonstrate the ability to cross artistic disciplines with exceptional quality towards performing an instrument, dancing on stage, acting without scripts, while performing against a beautiful stage backdrop they painted together as a group. Imagine you had this background of learning in the arts. And while I stay committed to talking about the arts only, perhaps there are ways this could occur in all fields of study for students. A blog for another time.

Later in life the collaborative struggle is lessened or non-existent for some. Future learners will know how to collaborate with one another and engage with multiple disciplines. There will be better understanding of the arts and integration into other areas or disciplines creating better instruction and teachings for learners because these tweens now move into the future with new ideas of what integrated and collaborative learning should really look like. Guaranteed failure of such projects would be to continue teaching in silos and resistance towards changing our teaching methods, and continue obliviously ignoring the needs and wants that every child is inherently born with a natural desire to learn as much as possible from their surroundings.

So how might we achieve this goal? How might we adapt the education system and retrain old thinking patterns to teach more collaboratively. How might we eliminate the silos, immerse the students into all disciplines simultaneously while retaining quality within disciplines? How might we progress the arts and grow the ideas of collaboration? How might we embrace diversity and include environmentally friendly actions towards these new learning opportunities? How might we learn from one another’s teachings today, to make a better future for the collaborative artists?

Human Centered Design

Following the Empathy Map Canvas (Gray, 2018) there are many user-groups to consider regarding this problem to solve. I would like to focus on two, the instructors and the students. As part of my investigations and experience over many years having worked in multiple arts environments, the empathy mapping offers some of these perspectives that I have heard personally and witnessed in various situations. The perspectives presented below span multiple institutions and over 20 years of personal experience.

Instructors

I am defining the term ‘instructors’ to include schoolteachers, university instructors and professional artists trained in their various fields of dance, drama, music, and visual arts.

Empathizing with the instructors we must understand the situation that they are in. This group have been taught their artform and have continued to teach many students in a specific way for years. They will want to retain quality and high standards of learning and achievement. The instructors’ role will be to re-learn and adapt to new ways of teaching that incorporates other disciplines. They need to teach in their specialist disciplines but also incorporate and integrate new disciplines with the same enthusiasm and quality. They need to make a conscious effort and decision to adapt to change that complements their own research towards a newer and better educational approach.

They see the marketplace is asking for artists to be specialists that can multitask; however, the true nature of artists is to follow their passion towards a specific discipline and pursue it to perfection where possible. They see perfection as unachievable if asked to incorporate other disciplines simultaneously. Many are not willing to adapt to this new kind of learning and will outwardly voice that this collaborative approach to learning an artform is set to fail if not enough attention is paid to each individual discipline. They are watching and reading about how other institutions are approaching the situation and reading about failures and success stories. I have personally heard them say that this won’t work and have imagined them saying we are creating generalized specialists and lowering our standards.

Currently, instructors train and teach in one discipline. Some avoid incorporating new possibilities of collaboration while others are willing to slowly adapt to the idea. There are mixed groups willing to hesitantly try something new. I imagine a day where they build amazing curriculums, incorporating multiple disciplines and learn how to work together as one team by sharing responsibilities towards one another’s disciplines and teaching methods.

When change occurs, many ears are listening, and information can be somewhat misinterpreted. Instructors hear others say, “I’m leaving”, “I’m retiring”, “this isn’t for me”, or “I don’t like this change”. Friends guide them towards following what they feel is justified, while colleagues might offer a more optimistic approach to try it out together as they will succeed united. Second-hand they hear about the complaints from the community that their training and artistic innovation will plummet turning a great learning institution into a lesser admired one amongst their peer groups.

Instructors share their fears of failure, fear of quality control, fear of work overload trying to learn new approaches while working. This causes frustrations to manifest as the process continues to move forward even if they have not yet trained for this change. Anxiety sets in about their own job security as to whether what they teach today will be relevant in the future.

Setting aside all the possible pain caused by this change there too is hope, wants, needs, and dreams. Instructors imagine the final evolution of this shared experience as; exceptional training, collaboration, new ideas, integrated learning, and an excellence level that surmounts any before its time. Motivating their personal behaviours and those of others becomes easier as the success stories out way the failures and an all-inclusive experience is had by a diverse group of students from all walks of life.

Students

I am defining the term ‘students’ to include young learners in the early stages of understanding various arts disciplines, and older learners into their first years of post-secondary study who have already been a part of the current learning systems.

Empathizing with the students we must understand the situation is different from young to older and I’ll try capture the various viewpoints from both groups. The role of the student is to learn via the instructor’s guidance. Students have less control over their situation of learning the younger they are, whereas the older they get the more engaged and influential they may become, dependant on the leadership of their instructor.

Students must be open to learning about the different disciplines even if they shy away from certain aspects for example singing or dancing. As they learn to adapt and integrate, they could become extremely proficient or learn to meet the basic expectations set out, all knowing that they have achieved a good level of understanding within all the disciplines to which they were exposed.

They will see their environments expand with many opportunities to explore. Peer to peer learning will offer them the opportunities to say and do what they experience in classrooms with more confidence. They will watch and read about the exciting ways in which their collaborative efforts may evolve in various ways. They too will notice their own personal letdowns but would be encouraged to understand that various levels of expertise can be achieved in all areas rather than only following one path alone and feeling isolated later down the line when collaboration is required, and you only have one skillset to offer.

They get to say, “I tried that, and it was awesome” or “It wasn’t really my strength but a least I know about it now and could engage with it as required”. Students’ behaviours can change as they learn to embrace new disciplines. I imagine them building careers incorporating all aspects of the arts thus benefiting the arts communities in ways we cannot imagine currently.

They are hearing about the benefits of this collaborative work through the praises of their parents, peers, and teachers. The older students will undoubtably hear and understand some of the negativity towards this new approach to learning, but hopefully their personal experience of the style of learning can offset any naysayers.

Students will always fear the unknown, find frustrations when they cannot do something and become anxious while others are watching. If these elements can be overcome through the guidance and leadership of positive instructors, the gains a student can experience will be highly sort after. They can be motivated by their friends, family, and instructors to achieve and be as creative as possible if the right environment is presented to them as early as possible in their life.

We have a problem! We empathize with our users! Let’s ideate and prototype collaboratively.

References

Google Arts & Culture. (n.d.). Sounds Like Kandinsky. https://artsandculture.google.com/project/kandinsky

Gray, Dave. 2018. “Updated Empathy Map Canvas.” Medium. The XPLANE Collection. July 21. https://medium.com/the-xplane-collection/updated-empathy-map-canvas-46df22df3c8a.

Hans, K. (June 15, 2024). Reframe Your Problem. https://d2l.ucalgary.ca/d2l/le/content/537680/viewContent/6457633/View

Hans, K. (June 15, 2024). What’s Your Problem. https://d2l.ucalgary.ca/d2l/le/content/537680/viewContent/6457632/View

Williamson, S. (Sep 7, 2022). Scandals, riots, and Ballet. The Collector. https://www.thecollector.com/igor-stravinsky-the-rite-of-spring/

Baby, Kids’ world, (November 23, 2021). Natural Desire to Learn. Ooh Noo Blog. https://www.ooh-noo.com/blog/natural-desire-to-learn/