Arts and Learning

UNESCO has recognized the potential of Arts Education and Creativity to enhance social cohesion and to promote a culture of peace.  In 1999, the Director General of UNESCO issued an appeal on Arts Education which stated, “at a time when family and social structures are changing, with often adverse effects on children and adolescents, the school of the 21st 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.”   Since then, UNESCO has promoted this compelling vision through international symposia and meetings including two World Conferences on Arts Education held in Lisbon, Portugal in March 2006 and Seoul, Republic of Korea in May 2010.

Artists and educators in the southern hemisphere consistently emphasize the need for capacity building in the field with particular reference to research methodology and teacher education.  For example, the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Arts Education, Port Elizabeth, South Africa stated, “there must be profound changes in structures, school curricula, and teaching methods and practices so as to provide a quality response to today’s challenges (poverty and exclusion, globalization, violence and conflicts, non-respect of human rights, etc.)  (UNESCO 2001, 5)  Recommendations of a Regional Conference on Arts Education, Nadi, Fiji, include “The training of teachers and other professional personnel to contribute actively to the revitalization of arts in education in the Pacific;” (UNESCO) 2003, 78).

There is mounting evidence of the value of the arts in education, both as an intrinsic component of human culture that deserves formal recognition in the school curriculum, and also as an instrument for achieving a wide range of essential learning goals.  There is increasing support for the view that the arts can enhance the social, psychological and physical development of the child or adolescent as a healthy, productive and democratic individual.  A young person who is exposed to the arts at school has an enhanced potential to become a more creative, imaginative, empathetic, expressive, confidant, self-reliant and critically thinking human being.

On the one hand, this means that the arts can serve as interdisciplinary, pedagogical tools that may be applied to the teaching of specific subjects in school, such as literacy, numeracy and social studies at the basic level, as well as civics, literature, science and mathematics at the secondary level.  In this way, the arts have the potential to contribute to the enhancement of quality in basic education.  On the other hand, it also means that the arts have an important role in meeting the 1999 appeal by UNESCO’s Director General that the arts be incorporated into the school curriculum as a measure to promote social cohesion and a culture of peace.  “Today we are clearly and strongly aware of the important influence of the creative spirit in shaping the human personality, bringing out the full potential of children and adolescents and maintaining their emotional balance – all factors which foster harmonious behavior.  (UNESCO 1999, 40)  Through the arts, young people can learn to live together while embracing cultural diversity. 
 

References

UNESCO (1999)  Reproduced in UNESCO (2001) 40-41.

UNESCO (2001) Cultural heritage, creativity and education for all in Africa.  Document based on the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Arts Education, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 24-30 June 2001.  Paris.

UNESCO (2003) Arts Education in the Pacific Region: Heritage and Creativity.  Document based on the conclusions of the Regional Conference on Arts Education, Nadi, Fiji, 25-29 November 2002.  Paris.