Experimental Learning
Teaching Creativity: Collaboration, Intuition, and Invention for Individuals and Groups
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Suttor
Individual creation requires extensive practice, but also to “think without thinking.” For 20 years, I have observed students make art the leading comprehensive drama school in the United States. I teach interdisciplinary classes to “innately” talented students – from diverse backgrounds – with already refined “learned” skills. I intend to talk about the mechanisms that drive creative decision-making, enabling students to access their individuality, and trust working with others. My teaching process focuses on encouraging students to make such risk-taking “mental leaps,” by seeking an intersection between innate and learned behavior. This process makes good art, or at least something better than rigid art making or unfocused art making. And while some have learned to access their creativity, regardless of background, they all must learn to collaborate. Together in class, we focus on observation. What do you see? What do you hear? Time and time again I witness this process produce extraordinary art.
Challenging Visual Bias: Meaning-Making and the Power of Music in an Audiovisual Sensory Experience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session John L. Vitale
Research has concluded that vision is the most dominant sense for humans who do not exhibit sensory difficulties. For the overwhelming majority of the population, therefore, particularly in the West, we live in a world that is visually biased. Yet, I contend that it is our auditory sense that subconsciously and covertly provides the lion’s share of meaning and context for us in our everyday lives. I refer to this inherent contradiction as the “great paradox.” As a means of further exploring and explaining this “great paradox,” my themed paper session is threefold. First, I will examine the visual bias of our modern-day society, including specific theoretical and practical examples. In addition, a brief historical analysis of visual bias will also be provided. Secondly, I will investigate the “great paradox” by initially exploring the critical role that sound plays in the growth and development of humans from the fetus to the pre-school child. Thirdly, I will theoretically and practically demonstrate the belief that music is the pivotal and decisive variable in an audiovisual sensory experience. In sum, this paper will demonstrate that music (the auditory world) is a critically powerful and significant aspect the entire human experience that challenges visual bias in a clandestine manner. This paper will provide important theoretical, philosophical, and practical connections for educators and practitioners of Music, the Arts, and Media.
The Humanising Potential of Art: Political Theatre and Peasants in Brazil
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kelci Pereira, Jane Pereira
In the text we explore the pedagogical processes of artistic formation, particularly in relation to theatrical language, based on a political and popular approach. This is the description and analysis of a theatrical production workshop, which is part of the experiences of the Brazilian Theatrical Collective called Peasants Scenes. This group is formed by students and professors of the course, Rural Education, of the Federal University of Piauí (UFPI), who have chosen political theatre as an instrument of expression of the difficult reality of peasants in Brazil. In a scenario of resistance of the rural people like ours, we understand the emancipatory pedagogical power of art, when social form and aesthetic form are articulated dialectically. In addition, we consider that the historical basis of the epic theatre and the oppressed, can contribute decisively to this task to show, narrate and record the problems suffered by the peasant peoples of contemporary Brazil. Finally, experiences such as these show pedagogical ways capable of recovering the political dimension of art in this context of multiple oppressions.
Dialogue as a Means to Co-construct Children’s Experiences of Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sarah Belanger Martel
Encounters with artworks are often portrayed (and studied) as silent, individual and sometimes rather private experiences. Yet, art is equally known to be a powerful vector for sharing with others, feeling and thinking in ways that are held, by many, to be universal. Entering the vast field of the experience of art from the perspective of its connection with the collective, the research project on which this communication is based also looked at encounters with artworks lived as shared events. Developing an open dialogue with small groups of six to eight years olds visiting a contemporary art exhibition, the author looked at what is happening when children are prompted to discuss their ideas, feelings and interpretations as they engage with the artworks and with others. Adopting a constructivist grounded theory approach, this project focused on children’s discourses to renew our understanding of what is verbalized, but also of what takes place in the collective encounters with artworks. Its results highlighted the co-construction of the experience of art as a space to be-with : expressing and learning about ways of being with the artworks, but also about ways of being with the world and with each other. Presenting the research project that took place over the course of the summer 2018, this communication will expand on its emerging theorization to open up a discussion on the innately democratic character of the experience of art and the potential this conceptualization holds for arts education.
