The Arts as a mode of knowing

1. The Arts as a mode of knowing Dr. Elizabeth Grierson

2. The paper engages with UNESCO’s defining notion that ‘the arts shape the world’ through working towards the goal of ‘living harmoniously’ (Joubert, 2003: 3)

3. UNESCO defines three focus points • the importance of recognising • the existence of diverse view points and cultures • each individuals ability to influence his or her future • the necessity to invite active professionals into schools to complement theory with practice

4. The 1990’s have been marked by very considerable and rapid change as national cultures have been drawn into new global inter-connections. Thee re new challenges, new risks, new uncertainties and new struggles’. Summary statement for Mobilising the Power of Culture, the fourth Thematic Debate at Higher Education in the Twenty First Century, Vision and Action, the World Conference on Higher Education, UNESCO, Paris, 5-9 October 1998.

5. ‘At a time of ‘unprecedented inter-connections between cultures’ (9) UNESCO is constructing a pro-active response to the extraordinary challenges of globalisation, acknowledging that ‘in a time of highly accelerated change, the maintenance of meaningful connections to inherited cultures has also become even more problematic’ (9)

6. Two of UNESCO’s primary policy objectives in the 1998 Action Plan are: • to ‘promote new links between culture and the education system so as to ensure full recognition of culture and the arts as a fundamental dimension of education for all, develop artistic education and stimulate creativity in education programmes at all levels’ and • ‘promote education conducive to the mastery and creative use of new information technologies among younger generations as users and producers of messages and content, and give priority to education in civic values….’

7. Five questions posed by the 1998 World Conference have a foundational relevance at this present UNESCO Meeting on Arts Education in Fiji (November, 2002). They are (1998a:10): • How well do educational systems inform young people about ‘other cultures’ - those of the past as well as those different from our own?’ • The arts are taught with too much emphasis on technique: how can arts education be broadened to include various contexts in which art forms originated and flourished? • How can meaningful intercultural education be made part of university education in the context of today’s globalized information flows and cyberspace?

8. What are the kinds of research or other academic activity that universities can undertake to fill these lacunae? • Can some methods be identified to enable universities to work more closely with museums and antiquities departments to build better awareness and understanding of cultural heritage?

9. Creative Industries is a category named by New Zealand Prime Minister in February 2002 as one of three target areas for enterprise and growth in the New Zealand economy. The Honourable Helen Clark’s Statement to Parliament, later published on her website (2002), defined these industries as “a diverse sector, which includes film and television, visual arts, design, music, fashion, and multimedia art”. (Grierson, 2002)

10. A timely word of caution is noted in the UNESCO Final Report (1998b: 57): While recognising that globalisation and internationalisation are irreversible trends, support for these concepts should not lead to dominance or new forms of imperialism by major cultures and value systems from outside the region; rather, it is of vital importance that every effort should be taken to protect and promote the strengths of local cultures and intellectual and scholarly traditions.

11. Professional’s Role - Complementing Theory with Practice ‘The necessity to invite active professionals into schools to complement theory with practice’ is UNESCO’s third focus point to address (Joubert, 2002:3). The General Overview - Arts Education in the Pacific Region (Joubert, 2002), ‘UNESCO’s position on arts education is to travel beyond art’s esoteric rise from practice - from the discipline of tools and materials, form and function and to define the world of arts practice as a vehicle for life, promise and achievement’…….’Arts practices have the capacity to stimulate societal partnerships and solidarity where its citizens cooperate in an atmosphere of peace and well-being’ (2002:3).

12. The publication from which this case study is taken isCommunities Across Borders: New immigrants and transnational cultures(Kennedy & Roudometof, 2002), from the chapter ‘Navigations: Visual Identities and the Pacific Cultural Subject’ (Grierson, 2002: 156-157):

13. Concluding comments contextual approaches to the arts in education are called for in order to encourage discussion and dialogue across the designed and pre-packaged borders of consumer culture;by this means the arts will move beyond ‘designing culture’ to activate new modes of thought and practice while calling into present significance the defining cultural heritages of the past that reinforce ‘local’ strengths in a globalised world.

14. The fundamental proposal I hope this paper leaves with you is that attention to cultural context is vital if the arts are to proclaim a continuing emergence for the ‘local’ individual and community in a global world order. Teaching the arts in practice through a contextual investigation of social and cultural theories and histories will enhance the arts as a living knowledgefor today, a practice which defines who we are, what we are, why we are, and where we are. Furthermore by engaging with where we have beenthe arts can aid our understanding of where we are going.

15. I advocate for the arts to be a compulsory part of every child’s educational experience - in every Pacific location - so that every child is given the opportunity to be an active part of their own, their community’s and their region’s future.

16. With a cultural context approach the arts- go beyond the ‘value-added’ mentality of convenient cultural packaging;- go beyond instrumentalised solutions to globally designed enterprise culture;- by this validation lead the way in opening the political economy of cultural production to critique and interrogation;- through this knowledge individuals and nations are then strengthened and stabilised.

17. In order to achieve this aim, presently encapsulated in the UNESCO framework for the process of learning in art education, learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be, I maintain that it is crucial that education policy and practice focuses time, energy, resources and attention on the ethical values of the arts for social living.

18. To invigorate the arts as potent modes of knowing, as stated in ‘Global Sites’ (Grierson 2000: 546), it is through the arts that we ‘learn to know how to know; learn to do through knowing why we do learn to live together through knowing why we live apart;and finally learn to be through knowing what ‘being’ might become.