Growing Artists in a Pandemic
Let’s make this a “GAP Year” for Arts Education
This is an incredibly challenging moment in Arts Education. Schools, Creative Youth Development organizations, and education departments of major cultural institutions are struggling with how to continue their youth arts education programs during this Pandemic year. After grappling with the challenges, I strongly recommend we treat this year as a GAP Year (Growing Artists in a Pandemic Year) for Arts Education.
After founding and being at the helm of the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit for 27 years; and serving as a consultant for a major school district and several arts organizations, I have navigated all manner of obstacles to keep arts education vital and viable. Only our current crisis has led me (and many of you) through the five stages of grief. First came denial: surely with modest adjustments, we would be able to do arts education the way we have successfully done for years! When this was quickly proven wrong, anger set in: how could it be that students in Detroit, already disadvantaged in terms of arts access, would lose the ability to come together and do what they love? Next was bargaining: we could keep choir if we just did it outside … stood 10 feet apart instead of 6 …and wore masks … and encased our teaching artists in Plexiglas… and made sure the wind was always behind us … With clarity, depression arrived: there are simply no sufficient ways to ensure safety for in-person arts education for the immediate future. Like so many of you, I was on the brink of concluding that this would become a “lost year” in arts education.
Ultimately, I realized that striving for normalcy was standing in our way. There was no way to provide arts education programs in the way we had formerly hoped, but it needn’t translate into a “lost year.” When we conceptualize the year ahead as a “gap year,” akin to the one many students opt for between high school and college, we become focused on growth and dynamism, rather than “place-holding.” It is not approached as a year off, but rather, a year “on” — a year to explore subjects or longer projects that normally fall outside the confines of the structured school community. It may be difficult to set some aspects of arts education aside, but the payoffs will be found in greater engagement, deeper exploration, and artistic discovery paired with honed abilities.
I credit a lot of my success back to my own gap year in 1984: as a budding teenage actor/director/playwright, I wanted to take a year to have unique experiences that I couldn’t have while enrolled in school. I traveled to meet and study with my artistic heroes. I produced my own shows at a local professional theatre. In some ways it was the loneliest year of my life — out on my own at 18, without classmates and away from my family. But it was also incredibly transformational. I learned hard lessons I never would have learned in school. After that gap year, I started as a freshman with a deeper level of confidence in myself and a clearer understanding of what I wanted to get out of college.
I propose in this GAP Year we focus not on what experiences are being lost but on the things that CAN be done REALLY WELL during this time. We have to ask ourselves “What can we do this year, that we would never be able to do normally?”
When I was Artistic Director of Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, my team and I had to work around the transportation challenges and time-constraints of teenagers. This led us to do choose having large-group rehearsals — often at the expense of time focused on working individually or in small groups. Because we had to have all students (100+) there at the same time because of carpools, etc. it made it impossible for me to schedule “special” rehearsals as I would normally do when directing an adult production. Fortunately, one thing we CAN do during this GAP Year is devote time to individual and small group training. Even prior to the Pandemic, one area where online learning excelled was in private art lessons and small group classes.
While there are staggering obstacles to arts experiences in this crazy year, unique opportunities exist for significant growth. One of the great fears for this year is that we will have to dispense with artistic rigor. But this GAP Year does not need to be watered down arts training. Instead it can tap into experiences that will maximize young artists’ growth.
Here are some examples of arts areas of study which are uniquely suited to rigor during this GAP year:
- Music Theory
- Playwriting
- Digital Design
- Video and Audio editing
- Acting Monologues and Musical Theatre solos
- Keyboard and piano for singers and those playing other instruments
- Solo dance
- Life Drawing
- Animation
- Analyzing great film and videos of great performances
- Musical Composition/Songwriting
- Art History and Criticism
While these specialized areas may not continue to be a student’s focus post-Covid, when they can safely return to in-person arts programs they will bring new depth, context, and skills to their artistic journeys.
The other unique thing we can have in this year is ACCESS to expertise. Many of the greatest artists in the nation are currently unable to perform and many are eager and willing to share with the next generation during this time. Giving young people the opportunity to have streaming master classes and Q and A sessions with world-renowned artists, no matter how many thousands of miles away, is a uniquely GAP Year experience. There is also the improved access because transportation — a huge challenge for youth in a city like Detroit — is removed as an obstacle for participation.
As a consultant for the Detroit Public Schools Community District, Sperling Arts Strategies is developing an example of a GAP Year program, called RAMP-UP: Rigorous Arts Mentorship Program — Under Pandemic (lots of acronyms with P’s these days). Before the Pandemic, we had established partnerships with 24 major cultural institutions, schools of higher education, and Creative Youth Development organizations to support the students at the District’s Detroit School of Arts high school and four Middle School Arts Conservatories. Due to the Pandemic, guest artists from these organizations (and all District partners) are not allowed in the buildings. Also, the District is offering families the option of either face-to-face or online-only learning. This means that members of bands, dance companies, theatre troupes, and choirs will have a mixture of students (and teachers) who are in the building and at home. The combined difficulty of health risks posed by in-person arts education and the unwieldiness of teaching arts to large groups online led us to develop this innovative GAP Year program. RAMP-UP will utilize our arts partners to support teachers in creating unique learning opportunities for students throughout the entire school year. We have invited the 24 organizations to provide mentors who would work with 5-student cohorts for 32 weeks, mentoring them in the artist’s area of expertise. This program is made possible by investments DPSCD has already made to computer tablets and Wi-Fi connectivity for all students and the ability for students to take home instruments as well as other arts equipment and materials.
The mentorships for RAMP-UP are not set yet (and not fully funded yet— email SperlingArtsStrategies@gmail.com if you are interested in supporting) but one exciting example will be mentorships from Y Arts (Detroit YMCA) partnered with The Detroit Creativity Project, an organization created by Detroit improv comics who are now in Hollywood on shows like The Good Place, Key and Peele and Modern Family. The 5-student cohorts working with the artist mentors Y Arts/DCP are providing will spend 32 weeks going deeply into improv and sketch comedy — as middle school students — with an expert in the field. While there is no way a middle school drama class would go that deep into something like improv in a normal year, this GAP Year experience could be transformational for them as theatre artists and as young people. And the 1 to 5 teacher-to-student ratio, even online, has the potential to create strong relationships with caring adults outside of their families or schools, a key element to successful mentorships.
So, how can you plan a GAP Year for your students? Take the first step by asking yourself these questions:
What unique resources do we have that can support students in arts learning?
Partner organizations? Professional alumni? Instruments, equipment, materials that students can take home? Laptops, tablets and/or wifi that students can use at home? Teaching Artists with strong mentoring skills?
How can the removal of ACCESS OBSTACLES create unique opportunities?
Can you connect virtually with acclaimed artists and alumni across the world? Can schedules be made more flexible because there is no transportation needed for the teaching artist or the students? What online resources can be used to replace the exposure provided by field-trips at no or little cost?
What are ways that we can use these resources especially effectively online?
Private lessons? Small group lessons? Masterclasses where an artist is streamed on a screen in an in-person classroom or to individual computers at home? What are things that can learned just as well online as they could be in-person? What online experiences can create opportunities for rigor and mastery without having to be done face-to-face.
And then let’s all hope and pray that this is only one GAP year, and that by the fall of 2021 we will return to our tried-and-true arts education practices, hopefully wiser for our GAP Year and able to incorporate new ideas learned from this year by all of us, as students, artists and educators.
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Rick Sperling is the CEO of Sperling Arts Strategies, the lead arts consultant for Detroit Public Schools Community District. Sperling is the founder of Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit, one of the nation’s top Creative Youth Development organizations, which he led for 27 years before passing the baton to Mosaic alum DeLashea Strawder. During his tenure Mosaic toured all-teen productions to Africa, Asia, Europe and 30 states throughout the U.S. and Canada; and established ongoing partnerships with The Public Theatre in New York and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada. For his work with Mosaic, Sperling was named a Detroit News Michiganian of the Year and given the Detroit Free Press award for lifetime achievement in theatre.
