The Arts as a mode of knowing

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The Arts as a mode of knowing

Dr. Elizabeth Grierson
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• The paper engages with UNESCOs defining notion
  that the arts shape the world through working
  towards the goal of living harmoniously
  (Joubert, 2003 3)

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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

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The 1990s 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.

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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)
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Two of UNESCOs 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.

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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 (1998a10)

• 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 todays globalized information flows and
  cyberspace?

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• 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?

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• 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
  Clarks 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)

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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.

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Professionals Role - Complementing Theory with
Practice

• The necessity to invite active professionals
  into schools to complement theory with practice
  is UNESCOs third focus point to address
  (Joubert, 20023).
• The General Overview - Arts Education in the
  Pacific Region (Joubert, 2002), UNESCOs
  position on arts education is to travel beyond
  arts 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 (20023).

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• The publication from which this case study is
  taken is Communities 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)

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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 cultureby 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.

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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 knowledge for 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 been the arts can aid our understanding
  of where we are going.

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• I advocate for the arts to be a compulsory part
  of every childs educational experience - in
  every Pacific location - so that every child is
  given the opportunity to be an active part of
  their own, their communitys and their regions
  future.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.