In Arts Education, Color Outside the Lines
So here’s a question: How can teachers teach creativity more creatively?
Jen Delos Reyes has given this a lot of thought. She teaches art and art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is the founding director of Open Engagement, which promotes socially engaged artwork.
She plans to lead a session called “Rethinking Art Education for Everyone” at the upcoming Iowa Arts Summit, so we asked her for three ideas she’ll ask the summit participants to consider.
1. Move beyond the Old Masters
Students of all ages can benefit from copying the greats. They can learn about color and texture by painting their own starry night, à la Van Gogh. They can learn about rhythm and harmony by composing their own variation of Mozart’s “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
But the world has lots of masters and they’re not all old (or white or male or dead). As long as teachers are choosing examples to steal from, why not reach for some fresh alternatives — especially in terms of form.
“What if you were to look at socially engaged work, like Rick Lowe’s Project Row Houses?” Delos Reyes said, referring to a community art project that has transformed five blocks of a struggling neighborhood in Houston. “How different would that be?”
2. Redefine the role of an artist
Ask most people what an artist does and they’ll probably tell you: An artist paints or draws or dances or sings. Most people define artists in terms of the objects or performances they create.
But can that definition broaden or blur?
“An artist is someone who, through creative means, sort of questions what we do in society and repackages it and responds through the things they make,” Delos Reyes said.
That’s not a perfect definition, she said, but it can help students understand how integral the arts are to every other subject. Simply adding an “A” to the STEM curriculum — voilà: STEAM! — isn’t enough.
3. Keep the bar high
Students rise or sink to their teachers’ expectations, so keep them high.
Delos Reyes mentioned the documentary “A Touch of Greatness,” about a teacher named Art Cullum who challenged his grade-school students to perform Shakespeare. He understood that children — even young ones — can identify with the big ideas and emotions in classical literature.
“I’m really excited by educators who don’t think they need to lower the bar,” Delos Reyes said.
— Michael Morain, Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs
