Let's take a look first at arts education as a means of promoting a creatively capable citizenry. In 2006, in Lisbon, UNESCO held its first conference on arts education, which culminated in the Road Map for Arts Education. According to that road map, "21st century societies are increasingly demanding workforces that are creative, flexible, adaptable and innovative and education systems need to evolve with these shifting conditions. Arts Education equips learners with these skills, enabling them to express themselves, critically evaluate the world around them, and actively engage in the various aspects of human existence" (Road Map 2006).

Keynote speakers* at the 1st UNESCO arts education conference in Lisbon, 2006, addressed this issue by stressing the emotional and moral impact of the arts on cognitive development. So did we, as keynotes at the 2nd, by arguing that in addition to their intrinsic value, the arts do indeed have a utilitarian value of direct application to the creative needs of 21st science and technology. We offered a summary of our remarks in a previous post (and the text of our speech is available here). Suffice it to say, our bottom line is that arts education from kindergarten through college may be the modern world's best hope for exercising precisely those imaginative and cognitive skills necessary to creative invention in all fields of endeavor.

Clearly, we're not just talking artistic creativity here. Arts can provide early and ready training in just that kind of problem-solving and discovery process that may manifest as creative facility in science, in business, in politics and in social change agency. Our studies of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences, literature, economics and peace categories all show the same thing: creative individuals are much more likely than average professionals in their field to practice one or more of the arts. Moreover, these innovators often write or talk about how important their artistic avocation is in helping them to understand the creative process, to deal with ambiguous problems, and to cultivate the mental tools and mindset that enable them to explore multiple solutions. These are valuable lessons that arts teach regardless of whether the lessons are applied within art or without.

Many of the artists and educators attending the conference applied their creativity outside art, too, to address the problems of political and social repair. For these attendees, any focus on traditional arts and crafts had a dual purpose: they wished to preserve cultural diversity, yes, but more than that, to repair society and communities in crisis. In urban areas, especially, political and economic dislocations, as well as the dissolution of family structures, have led to an increase in crime and gang warfare, to communal and domestic violence. Arts education in such settings offers a powerful tool for reclaiming children and youth from the streets, reducing prison recidivism rates, and revitalizing poor and marginalized populations.

For instance, Dani Lyndersay, a professor at the University of the West Indies, spoke of a recent arts program enabling students and other community members to unlock memories and experiences of the 1970s' Black Power movement. In a mix of languages, musical forms and historical enactments, participants learned a part of their history that had been forgotten "in order to take responsibility for tomorrow." In the Middle East, theatre arts programs such as the Ashtar Theatre aim similarly to help young people envision alternate possibilities within reigning political paradigms by enhancing dialogue "around controversial issues, taboos, and unspoken subjects," and cultivating the kind of transformation in which "the oppressed should realize that he/she has a role in breaking the vicious circle of oppression" (Proceedings of the 2nd World Conference on Arts Education).

We find it significant that in these and many other social programs tradition and innovation already co-exist-and to a purpose. These kinds of programs are premier examples of putting the arts, ethnic or not, to creative use. Arts are useful. They have utility beyond the art itself. It seems a no-brainer, we think, that artist educators, artist activists, and arts ministers would jump on the bandwagon of arts for creativity in all fields of endeavor. Since they are already using art functionally to fix society, why not also use art functionally to improve cognitive ability and creative potential?

A few speakers understood this point. Michael Wimmer of EDUCULT in Austria, proposed that art is a form of research of just as much value as scientific research or research on education. He argued that the qualitative methods of the arts are just as valuable as the quantitative methods of the sciences, and synergistic with them; society would do well to learn to use those artistic methods explicitly.

In her talk, Christina Hong of Australia also argued that arts education will only become universal when arts advocates drop "arts for art's sake" - an exclusive approach that has failed to improve funding of or access to quality arts education anywhere in the world. The growing economic need for a creative workforce is, in her view, forcing a paradigm shift in what society needs from the arts, and thereby new opportunities for arts advocacy. "Arts education for today must be different from arts education of the past," she said, "because the goal post has shifted...arts education programs need to evolve to encompass not only the development of the ways of knowing that the arts avail, but also the development of the skills and dispositions of creative enterprise and related habits of mind" (Proceedings).

We couldn't agree more. The creative utility of the arts beyond the arts may provide just that argument for arts education capable of appealing to the economic and political powers that be. For the sake of an innovative economy, they might well provide the funding sorely needed to teach the arts, not just for their own sakes, but for the sake of society as a whole, as a kind of imaginative and creative literacy no national can do without. When people begin to value arts not only for social and cultural reasons, but as one of the best sources of creative skills for all disciplines, then tradition and innovation, past and future will synergize a new and integrated present.

The divide between tradition and innovation is a false one, we believe. Stay tuned for our next post on some of the syntheses we see bridging the gap between traditional, social and creative uses for the arts.

© 2010 Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein

Notes and References

Keynote speakers for the UNESCO 1st World Conference on Arts Education, held in Lisbon in March, 2006 were Antonio Damasio and Sir Ken Robinson. A summary of their talks is available @ http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBIQFjAA&url=....