Tuesday was Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. and reports from my CA colleagues indicate they had a good day visiting Congressional offices. Yesterday, the LA Times covered the high profile testimony in Congress offered by Wynton Marsalis, Linda Ronstadt, and Josh Groban. Ironically, they argued for more NEA funding while telling stories of learning to love music in informal settings such as their own homes in the midst of their families.
Like them, I grew up in a family that played music and sang together. I’m wondering how the NEA, schools, or even non-profit arts organizations can return informal art making to the daily life of the home. The LA Times article suggests that the Congressional testimony focused
on the import of reaching children with arts programming.
“Increasingly, people’s experience with music is passive,” Ronstadt
said. “We need to teach our children to sing their own songs and play
their own instruments, not just listen to their iPods.” I’d take this a step further, we need to teach children, parents, and grandparents to sing together before we even start worrying about whether or not they are writing their own songs.
The question of reversing the cultural trend away from a small group of professional artists producing for the consumption and enjoyment of the majority is central to advocating for the arts today. We need these professionals but we also need a broader amateur and family art world. I’d love to see us talk about reaching multiple generations simultaneously so the creative experience returns to daily life.
All people have the capacity to share creative experiences, but we now have generations that haven’t practiced together. Our Youth Symphony partners in Tijuana have taken Venezuela’s El
Sistema model of integrating parents into the music experience of their
child by having them sing familiar folk songs while the students learn
to play the melodies. I’m not aware of any school programs that merge the generations. Most non-profit arts programs with this aim exist outside their core focus and are dependent on donations. As a result they are amongst the first to go when funding gets tight.
Instead directing the attention of policy makers and funders to youth arts education as the future, let’s change our language to promote multi-generational arts experiences to create art filled lives today.
Related: Mark Swed at LA Times blogs about Ronstadt’s testimony and Americans for the Arts posts all written testimony from Tuesday.
Hi Dalouge. It’s great to see your blog on artsjournal.com.
There are a lot of intergenerational arts education program around the country that operate on a variety of levels from out-of-school time, to connected to the traditional school day, to programs to go from class to home and back to class, and more.
At the Center for Arts Education, we’ve been running such a program for over a decade now: Parents as Arts Partners, which connects families, teachers, artists, and administrators at the school, making art together, all connected to State standards as appropriate to the grades in that particular school.
Up until last year, we were working with 150 schools per year.
Boy, am I with you on the thrust of your blog. NEA funding was originally only about professional artmaking (a concession to union interests that supported the creation of the NEA and NEH back in the early sixties), and only gradually eased into connecting with homegrown art making (mostly through the folk arts). The term “participation” has been redefined to mean nothing more than “attendance.” Also, in school arts education was captured by disciplines that didn’t connect easily with homemade art — namely band and chorus. It is ironic that America’s key instruments of social, at-home music making — the keyboard and guitar — are only now working their way into public education from the margins.
What if, fifty years ago, we had simply given families “arts learning vouchers” that could be spent for private piano lessons, at the local guitar studio, a one-on-one with a painter or fiction writer, or turned into the school system to help fund the (sigh) marching band.
The need to recapture the connection with heritage and personal achievement that accompanies real participation in art making is one of the two or three primary subtexts of my book, Arts, Inc. But right now the kind of arts learning the fuels art at home is happening almost entirely through informal, tutorial, or self-help instruction that has no connection with the kinds of in-school arts eduation that we mostly advocate for.
My personal view is that, as our economy and entire society reset after the current recession, we will arrive at an expanded appreciation for the value of music, drawing, drama, and poetry done at home. Smart public policy can play a role in encouraging art as a route to a high quality of life once the false promise of consumerism is abandoned, but we’re only now beginning the conversation.
Bill Ivey
Integrating the family into a child’s arts education experience is vital! I currently intern with the Orange County Arts Education Center in Orlando, Florida. http://www.ocaec.org
One of our main goals right now is to educate parents on how they can become more involved not only the art their child does, but also how to become advocates for their children’s art programs. We recently held a Parent Arts Forum where we first brought into perspective the cuts facing arts education, and secondly how they can be proactive about voicing their concerns to school principals, superintendents, and legislators.
Parents should always play an active role in their child’s education, but I feel it is even more important to do so with regards to art education. Creating fond memories with a child of shared art experience with grandma or dad can last a life time.