Arts and Education

By John Hobday

The first CCA con­fer­ence that I attended was in late 1967. As I recall the three key top­ics of con­cern were:  the lack of ade­quate gov­ern­ment sup­port to build on the suc­cess of Cen­ten­nial Year; the fail­ure of the media to pro­vide suf­fi­cient cov­er­age of the arts; and the lack of empha­sis on arts edu­ca­tion in our schools.

Since then, the qual­ity and quan­tity of arts edu­ca­tion in Canada has, with a few excep­tions, diminished.

Study after study that I have read, con­fer­ence after con­fer­ence I have attended, made strong rec­om­men­da­tions about the impor­tance of engag­ing young peo­ple at an early age in qual­ity arts edu­ca­tion.  Yet, as Pro­fes­sor Larry O’Farrell, the holder of the UNESCO Chair in Arts and Learn­ing at Queen’s has pointed out  “the arts still hold a pre­car­i­ous place at best in school cur­ric­ula around the world at the same time that community-based youth arts pro­grams are typ­i­cally under­funded and impermanent.”

As a result of this lack of real com­mit­ment, what we have allowed to hap­pen in Canada is the cre­ation of a two-tier sys­tem. We have chil­dren who are lucky enough to have par­ents that under­stand the value of arts expo­sure and par­tic­i­pa­tion and who can afford after-school lessons in arts and bal­let and music. Then, there are the rest.

This is grossly unfair, par­tic­u­larly as we know that tal­ented peo­ple can be found in all social and eco­nomic strata and among those who may live in remote rural areas or an impov­er­ished inner-city core. The key to address­ing this imbal­ance of oppor­tu­nity lies in mak­ing it pos­si­ble for ALL young peo­ple to be exposed to the arts.

Not only because this may lead to a tal­ented child becom­ing an artist but also to build­ing informed arts-aware cit­i­zens who will enjoy and par­tic­i­pate in arts activ­i­ties through­out their lives.

Through­out the sub­se­quent decades, since the eupho­ria of 1967, one heard sick­en­ing reports about the dis­missal of qual­i­fied art teach­ers and the refusal of School Boards to replace them because of cost. While, there were many efforts made to involve pro­fes­sional artists to fill the gap, it was rare that these artists were prop­erly com­pen­sated or that they received the nec­es­sary ped­a­gog­i­cal train­ing required to teach in a com­plex multi-cultural school environment.

Grad­u­ally, through valiant efforts, excel­lent pro­grams such as Learn­ing Through the Arts and ArtsS­marts came into being across the coun­try with pos­i­tive results.

Many pro­fes­sional arts orga­ni­za­tions con­tin­ued to present their pro­grams in schools or bring bus-loads of chil­dren to their the­atre or art gallery or museum. All too fre­quently they under­took these activ­i­ties with­out ade­quate finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion. They pas­sively accepted this sit­u­a­tion as they felt they were help­ing to build audi­ences for their own future. Too often the sub­sidy pro­vided by the schools to make these excur­sions pos­si­ble were among the first items to be cut as they were not con­sid­ered to be a necessity.

Most of us who were aware of the ero­sion of qual­ity arts edu­ca­tion in the class­rooms of the nation felt help­less. Some, such as Wal­ter Pit­man, per­se­vered in heroic efforts to speak out. Nev­er­the­less, read­ing and math took prece­dence – and still do – over the sub­jects that have cre­ativ­ity at their core.

As arts edu­ca­tion advo­cate Sir Ken Robin­son has repeat­edly stated “Ele­men­tary and high schools tend to empha­sise math and sci­ence and lan­guages because the results can be more eas­ily mea­sured. If we can’t mea­sure artis­tic per­for­mance, then there is lit­tle incen­tive to spend pre­cious class­room time and money on teach­ing the arts”.

This under-appreciation of the role of the arts in stim­u­lat­ing the imag­i­na­tion and encour­ag­ing cre­ativ­ity is finally begin­ning to be recog­nised by busi­ness and some polit­i­cal lead­ers. To con­tinue to be a pros­per­ous nation Canada des­per­ately needs minds that can find cre­ative solu­tions to prob­lems – some­thing that all who engage in an artis­tic dis­ci­pline do all the time.

Per­haps the seeds from which an under­stand­ing of the impor­tance of arts and edu­ca­tion grew were planted in 1999. Fed­erico Mayor, the Director-General of UNESCO, issued an appeal which stated “at a time when fam­ily and social struc­tures are chang­ing, with often adverse effects on chil­dren and ado­les­cents, the school of the 21^st cen­tury must be able to antic­i­pate the new needs by accord­ing a spe­cial place to the teach­ing of artis­tic val­ues and sub­jects in order to encour­age cre­ativ­ity, which is a dis­tinc­tive attribute of the human species. Cre­ativ­ity is our hope “.

In 2006, the first UNESCO World Con­fer­ence on Arts Edu­ca­tion was sched­uled to take place in Lis­bon. In prepa­ra­tion for this event the Cana­dian Com­mis­sion for UNESCO ini­ti­ated a series of con­sul­ta­tions across the coun­try. Under the able chair­man­ship of Max Wyman, these hear­ings resulted in a com­pre­hen­sive report Learn­ing to Live, Liv­ing to Learn. The Cana­dian del­e­ga­tion at Lis­bon was thus well equipped to demon­strate that, in spite of the many defi­cien­cies in our provin­cial edu­ca­tional sys­tems, we were start­ing to equip our­selves to play a lead­er­ship role.

As a direct result of the “Roadmap” estab­lished at the Lis­bon Con­fer­ence, and wish­ing to share the inter­na­tional find­ings, the Cana­dian del­e­gates iden­ti­fied the need for a broader national voice for arts and learn­ing which would build on exist­ing ini­tia­tives and pro­mote aware­ness of the ben­e­fits of the arts and cre­ativ­ity for all Canadians.

A major step for­ward took place 2007. The first UNESCO Chair in Arts and Learn­ing in Canada was estab­lished at Queen’s Uni­ver­sity. Pro­fes­sor Larry O’Farrell was appointed to hold the Chair. This pro­vided the pos­si­bil­ity of a “home” for advanc­ing the issue in Canada and pro­vid­ing a direct link to the best think­ing around the world.

My sup­port for the CCA as an insti­tu­tion and its unique abil­ity to research and advo­cate on behalf of the cul­tural sec­tor as a whole is unwa­ver­ing. How­ever, the  effort required to over­come the effects of over forty years of neglect in arts edu­ca­tion, as well as the juris­dic­tional bar­ri­ers, led me to con­clude that the best approach was to help build an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated specif­i­cally to address this daunt­ing challenge.

In May 2007, I par­tic­i­pated in the first Arts and Edu­ca­tion Sym­po­sium at Ottawa Uni­ver­sity. I quickly realised that there was a real pos­si­bil­ity to har­ness the intel­li­gence and pas­sion that was so evi­dent and chan­nel it into a move­ment that could become an unstop­pable force for pos­i­tive change. With other “ded­i­cated lunatics” I have been work­ing hard ever since to help make this happen.

The next Arts and Learn­ing Sym­po­sium was held at Queen’s in 2008. I was appointed to chair the ses­sion at which the more than one hun­dred del­e­gates from across the coun­try were to be asked to rat­ify “A Frame­work for Action”. This doc­u­ment which had been pre­pared by Max Wyman, Larry O’Farrell and oth­ers, out­lined the vision and goals of a Cana­dian Net­work for Arts and Learn­ing. While I held my breath as it was put to a vote, it was approved unanimously.

This solid endorse­ment of the vital impor­tance of work­ing together for a com­mon cause made it pos­si­ble to move on to the next step. At its Sym­po­sium at the Royal Con­ser­va­tory in 2009, the Cana­dian Net­work for Arts and Learn­ing (CNAL) was for­mally estab­lished. In spite of some delays, it achieved char­i­ta­ble sta­tus a few weeks ago.

Based at the UNESCO Chair at Queen’s and with the gen­er­ous sup­port of the Ontario Tril­lium Foun­da­tion, a cam­paign has now offi­cially been launched to attract mem­bers to the Net­work. All who believe in the vision and goals are welcome.

The Board of CNAL, which includes CCA National Direc­tor Alain Pineau, is fiercely deter­mined that the arts must return to their right­ful place in class­rooms across Canada and are prop­erly taught by qual­i­fied teach­ers and artist educators.

Apart from the devel­op­ment of CNAL, I am also encour­aged by what is hap­pen­ing in many other coun­tries. The South Korean gov­ern­ment has played a lead role in advanc­ing global dis­cus­sion of the arts and learn­ing. At the Sec­ond World Con­fer­ence held in Seoul in May 2010, del­e­gates from 95 coun­tries approved the Seoul Agenda – Goals for the Devel­op­ment of Arts Edu­ca­tion.  I am con­fi­dent that the views expressed in this land­mark doc­u­ment are entirely con­sis­tent with those held by most Cana­dian arts lead­ers. The del­e­gates in Seoul were impressed that Canada had already cre­ated CNAL as a mech­a­nism for mov­ing the Seoul Agenda forward.

At its Gen­eral Assem­bly in 2011, UNESCO unan­i­mously approved the Seoul Accord. That same meet­ing also agreed to cre­ate the first Inter­na­tional Arts Edu­ca­tion Week May 21^st to 27^th, 2012.

This event will help to accel­er­ate the process of forg­ing the essen­tial coali­tion of: arts edu­ca­tors, pro­fes­sional arts prac­ti­tion­ers, those respon­si­ble for the admin­is­tra­tion of our provin­cial and ter­ri­to­r­ial schools, school boards, prin­ci­pals, teach­ers, par­ents and the chil­dren them­selves. Together, we can build a com­pelling case for the impor­tance of arts and learn­ing to the devel­op­ment of Canada  as a pros­per­ous and cre­ative nation.