TA Abstract

The inquiry objectives include:

 

1. An inventory of the artistic qualities commonly shared by artists-who-teach. This includes independent teaching artists in the spectrum of public agencies, and those who are affiliated with cultural organizations, higher-education, and certified K-12 education.

 

2. Affirmation of the specific benefits and challenges to a career artist when the opportunity to teach is available.

 

3. Alignment of career opportunities for artists with the 21st century educational and workforce ideals that are calling for heightened creative capacity in all citizens.

 

The process will include reference to existing studies on teaching artistry. To be listed here September 2007.

 

The following article provides an introduction to this thesis.

Teaching Artistry

Laura Reeder

Teaching Artist Journal, 2007, Vol. 5, No. 1, Pages 15-21

We know that arts are essential to education…but how is education essential to the arts?

 

There is increasing evidence that supports the value of the teaching artist to the contemporary vision of quality education. Studies continue to reinforce the intrinsic and instrumental value of artistic experience to the life of a learner. Yet, little formal research has been done to document the value of teaching to the craft and career of the artist. According to popular cultural dialogues, the arts can reform education, boost economics, expand social justice, and increase value in our everyday lives. Perhaps it is time to approach the counter-intuitive question: “How does teaching impact the development of an artist?”

 

Artists generally define success by their ability to communicate some internal message to an external audience through manipulation of certain elements. The teaching artist may spend less time manipulating those elements for an audience and more time manipulating those elements with students. That counter-intuitive question is often difficult to answer because education is always defined by student experience. When asked, teaching artists will cite the professional and instrumental educational skills that they gain. This is always defended as a good set of skills to have, and it helps to increase their livelihood in the profession. But, the question often remains: How does it strengthen their work in the studio, on the stage, on canvas, on paper, or in the rehearsal room?

 

History has promoted teaching as what an artist does to make money. This is not untrue, but it is also not the case for most artists that teach. Let’s face it. If anyone is in teaching just to make money, they are in the wrong business! Artists have often complained that teaching takes them out of the studio, off of the stage, away from rehearsing and creating. Successful, veteran artists, who also teach, are saying something else.

 

Not-So-Recent History

In the past thirty-something years, a profession of teaching artists has been articulated. It was always there, just not identified as a profession. Artists without MFAs could obtain faculty positions, art and music teachers were required to know little about child growth and development, or expected to have a curriculum. Dance studios, theater groups, museums, and more have only recently developed education departments. Arts councils have grappled with support for arts in education programming due to the controversy about tangible benefits to the artists they serve. About ten years ago, the director of a large urban art museum told me that his institution did not need education programming. He said,”…we are educational because we exist!” True perhaps, but the echoes in his empty galleries said otherwise. He was gone the next year and the new director made it her first order of business to establish an education department.

 

Over the past twenty years; as an art teacher in Boston City Schools and again in the Syracuse City Schools, as a museum educator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and then as a teaching artist with the Central New York Institute for Aesthetic Education, I was confronted with the old accusation that artists teach because they cannot achieve financial success as artists first. Without the peers to support my core belief that this was wrong, I just smiled and disagreed internally.

 

Now that the profession of “Teaching Artist” is an increasingly accepted career path, my peers and colleagues have generated plentiful testimonials to support what was once anecdotal and is now increasingly objective. We are finding that very definite and specific benefits await the artist who teaches. While we will agree that the impacts are not always measurable in money, fame, or individual security, the creative outcomes are tangible. From interviews and surveys I am conducting with teaching artists in the United States and a few other countries, it seems that we may be able to articulate some of those benefits.

 

When we use our artistry to teach:

1. We have stronger sense of our origins and life experience.
2. We are more frank and inquisitive about the process of discovery.
3. We fine-tune our expertise and develop fluency and dynamics in our media.
4. We understand the role of our art in the world of other artists.
5. We are driven to sustain art in a global community.
6. We use our artistry to reflect on, and transform our culture.

I have chosen to loosely drape these advantages over the constructive framework of critical thinking with Bloom’s Taxonomy[1] at the core. The inquiry that begins with our prior knowledge and works outward toward evaluation and transformation relates directly to how artists get their work done. While the arts in education field sees the teaching artist as a resident or partner to educators, this thesis embraces all artists that teach in universities, studios, performance spaces, classrooms, and more. The following benefits have been compiled from teaching artists that can point to specific areas of growth in their personal artistry as a result of their work with students

.

What We Know ~ We have stronger sense of our origins and life experience.

“ When these elements of my artistry are engaged in the process of teaching I feel more relaxed and confident and there is less conflict between my artist self and my teacher self.” Kerreen Ely-Harper, filmmaker, actor, director, Melbourne, Australia.

Life experience is undeniable. We all have it. It defines traits that we love and hate, but must acknowledge in order to be true to our work. When we work with students we are often forced to return to our own childhood perceptions of the world. Our memories are rejuvenated, the prior knowledge of our craft and early creative awareness becomes current.

 

We also remember that we must make art to exist. A primal understanding of artistry for core survival becomes fact. Teaching helps many of us to actually call ourselves ‘artist’. A surprising majority of successful artists surveyed, still wrestled with whether or not they are ‘real’ artists. They feel that earning a living in the arts included or excluded them from ownership of that title. In the classroom, someone is coming to you for your artistic experience. Students see you as an artist whether you feel ready for it or not.

 

As educators we are driven to research the artists that we know, admire, hate, or distrust when we are challenged by students to articulate what might be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in a work of art. We are able to spend more time reviewing the origin of our opinions or our lack of experience when we have to make them public in the classroom. The constant reflection on our personal journeys increases the depth of meaning in our work.

 

When we find that we lack prior knowledge from experience that would be really helpful to our next lesson, we are also compelled to run out and get that experience. We initiate our very own research with more determination. We develop an appetite for lifelong learning through our media.

 

 

What We Discover ~ We are more frank and inquisitive about the process of discovery.

“ I became more of a risk-taker (inquisitive) in rehearsal and performance, FINALLY understanding what all those damned improvisation exercises that used to seem pointless and drive me nuts were for.” Carol Ponder, American folk musician, Nashville, Tennessee.

The elements and principles that we use as the basic tools for artmaking and teaching can become distant and stylized when we are not forced to notice them regularly. Sort of like aesthetic calisthenics, we know that if we don’t spend some time rehearsing the fingering of a simple phrase or sketching a line quality over and over again, we may lose the integrity of that skill. Students require the ABC’s of each principle, and challenge us to know the basic stuff of our art all over again.

 

Confident teaching artists are always able to find something brand-spanking new in work they have been doing for years when they get to look at it again with fresh eyes. A professor and scout for the visual arts program at Syracuse University once said that she brought her own high school portfolio out each year for a concrete understanding of the simple elements that made art fresh. She also used that early art to recall elements that are still undeveloped in her adult work.

 

A surprise gift is delivered when we discover an opportunity to perform or exhibit in the educational world. While lots of us have our starry-eyes set on Broadway as the epitome of success, there are theater teaching artists that swear they do more professional acting in the classroom and studio than a lifetime of catering and commercials in New York City. Jessica Hudson, a dance teaching artist with Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, recently stated that the line was somewhat blurred when “… at a moment in front of the audience of students, teaching becomes my art”[2]. Actress and playwright Nilaja Sun has made a successful run of her play “…No Child” with Epic Theater by using her classroom as the subject of her highly acclaimed drama. Her students have become the subject of her art, a self-portrait of teaching artistry as vital to social justice emerges.

 

What We Master ~ We apply our experience and develop fluency and dynamics in our media.

“You must really "know what you know".... I am always pulling small parts of understanding apart into manageable components. The fun comes when my students are friendly guinea pigs for my own experimentation. They are willing to help me try out the “trapezoid, circle thing” that I have been researching in my script.” Pete Rush, actor, playwright, Ithaca, New York.

 

The functional nature of our media is raised up when we use it to teach in other modalities. The good news is that we find our “everyday work of art” [3] to be esteemed by others as necessary for learning and living. We see our art as essential to others and we endeavor to refine and perfect our expertise. The bad news is that we can eliminate some of the soul that makes our art so delicious. In the recent study, “Gifts of the Muse”[4] the comparison of instrumental versus intrinsic value has generated a hot dialogue in the cultural community. Lines have been drawn where lines really don’t exist to sort the learning into arts and non-arts genre. The good news is that it brings teaching artistry into the civic dialogue.

 

When we use our artistry to traverse disciplines, we do become adept at translating the excitement of very specific moment in our work; a spoken line parallels a painted line, it is related to musical phrase then into a line of reasoning, and ultimately to a path of movement across a stage. That challenge of changing disciplinary lenses puts a precise focus back onto our own skills.

 

Wisdom in perseverance and practice is a special by-product of teaching artistry. The value of rehearsal, trial and error, editing, and even discarding unsatisfactory products is raised up when we morph from artist to teacher and back to artist again, coaching young artists to expand their ideas requires us to be increasingly critical of our own efforts.

 

What We Grow ~ We analyze and cultivate the role of our art in the world of artists.

“I don’t even know what the “Dunham Technique” really looks like anymore. It has changed with each generation of student dancers that come through the studio.” Kathryn Dunham, dancer, choreographer (1909-2006)

 

As we teach critical analysis and apply it to our craft, we are able to look around and discover the similarities and differences in the work of others. The analysis of origin, effort, genre, context, mission, and quality in the community of artists brings us back again and again to defining and redefining our citizenship in a culture of artists. Our world becomes very large when we realize that the creative models we are researching with our students come from far and near, past and present. Our world becomes very small when we recognize ourselves as colleagues to people that lived centuries ago or on the other side of the globe.

 

While technology has hastened community-building for artists, teaching artistry has always prompted us to seek others who share our vision. The reinforcement of “artist-first-then-teacher” is not an uncommon theme in professional consortia for certified arts specialists, college professors, and ultimately teaching artists. The world continues to question the notion that teaching takes us out of the studio, so we look for like-minded artists and recognize the magic of our art in spite of old notions.

 

It has been recent, but, through organizations such as the Association of Teaching Artists, VSA Arts, the Teaching Artist Mentoring Project with the Association of Institutes for Aesthetic Education, and the Teaching Artist Journal, we do see support for artists to stay in practice as they seek out others with similar values. We are developing a community of professionals that can contribute to our artistic growth. The recent offering of a fellowship for teaching artists at Montalvo Arts Center in California is riding a wave of approval for championing the “third space” of excitement that happens when we merge art and learning.

 

What We Sustain ~ We synthesize our art in concert with a global community

“What comes out of my music is consistently better when it comes out of a dialogue. I feel as if I could write a piece now with a scientist in China and a teacher in Italy.” Glenn McClure, composer and musician, Geneseo, New York.

Teaching artists often find that when they seek out other artists to make use of their expertise for lesson planning, interdisciplinary and specialized curriculum, evaluative criteria, they are developing artistic colleagues from whom they can borrow tools, and exchange concepts. Since the stuff of our artmaking is those core elements of the discipline, we increase our repertoire and establish a circle of critics that we can trust to reflect on our work.

 

We aspire to higher and higher ideals for maintaining a satisfying lifestyle when we see that through teaching artistry, we can actually make a living as artists! Returning to the first challenge, our work can be very fulfilling when we can denounce the stereotype of starving artist, or waiter-by-day-artist-by-night. When we are invited to exhibit and perform as a result of our teaching artist fame, we are generating a new genre in the arts. Teaching artist Cynthia Weiss from Columbia College reminded us that the “post –modern definition of art is interdisciplinary”[5], thus the post-modern definition of art is embodied by artists who constantly scan the horizon through their teaching to bring new dimensions to their work.

 

The Final Reward ~ We use our artistry to reflect on, and transform our culture.

“If one has to teach another person to understand a subject, one has to go deeper into the subject and understand it in one's brain but also feel it in ones' emotion and heart.  If one can teach knowledge from heart, it contains additional power to reach out and to enlighten.” Lily Yeh, visual artist, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

Lily Yeh is the Executive Director of Barefoot Artists, Inc. Her mission is: “to bring the transformative power of art to the most impoverished communities in the world through participatory and multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development, and preserve and promote indigenous art and culture.” She has told me that while many times she must first work with students in Iran, Rwanda, or Philadelphia to secure food and shelter, she always finds that she manages to make art in ways and in places that she never knew existed as a result.

 

Pete Seeger, Lily Yeh, Kathryn Dunham, Billy Collins, and the ambassadors at the recent UNESCO “World Conference on Arts Education” in Lisbon all share the belief that we can use our teaching artistry to construct a better environment for ourselves and others. So very many artists use the activism of education to actually create meaningful and world-changing works of art. The students at El Puente Academy in Brooklyn, the producers of Bread & Puppet Circus, the photographer Wendy Ewald, and many more teacher-artist-learners find this to be the driving force behind their life work as artists.

 

When we ultimately, recognize ourselves as critical thinkers and can express our opinions with supporting evidence and wisdom, we can in turn, use our artistry to expand the power and discipline of others. When we come full circle and feel certainty in our artistry, then we will most likely become even better teaching artists, and the cycle will grow into something endless and rich.

 

The Big Idea

As I continue to gather vignettes from artists, a broad and exciting portrait of the new-world artist is emerging. As social theorists are drafting the framework for the next generation of learners, the model of the teacher-artist-learner begins to look a lot like the critical thinker that we hope to shape with our learning standards, or the cultural entrepreneur that we hope to inspire with our creative campuses. It is my hope that we will confirm teaching artistry as something that has always existed, it just needed to be excavated from the urgency of education, dusted off, and brought to the table.

 

 

 

 

Executive Director

Partners for Arts Education

www.arts4ed.org

 

315-234-9911

315-234-9912 FAX