Which is First, an Egg or a Hen? Children as Creators, Receivers, Makers, Explorers

1. Which is First, an Egg or a Hen? Children as Creators, Receivers, Makers, Explorers Panel discussion at Kedja Kuopio Eeva Anttila 16.6.2009 eeva.anttila@teak.fi

2. There is an artist in all of us… (J. Highwater 1981, 15) • Starting point: the holistic nature of children’s life world • Art, learning, and everyday life blend • Artistic experience and everyday experience blend • Art can be anywhere and everywhere • It can also be nowhere even when participating in an art context!

3. Arts + Education = ? • Arts education is something different than art and education put together • It is a metaphorical place where the person encounters a transformative experience that speaks to her/him on a different level than regular learning experiences (prereflective, emotional, bodily, sensory levels) • These experiences are personally meaningful, thus: • Arts education is a place for personally meaningful, transformative experiences that have an aesthetic component

4. Postmodern arts education • Dialogical • Interactive • Collective • Non-hierarchical • Multicultural • Interdisciplinary • Local • Particular • Diverse • Interested in “small” stories vs. universal truths

5. Artistic quality in arts education • The quality of experience • The quality of proces • The quality of product in relation to: • Technique, skill • Presence • Commitment • Articulation • Meaning

6. Process matters… • The way an art work is created is reflected in the work itself • A predetermined, controlled process produces a closed form with a single meaning • A process with no predetermined aims leads to an open form that bears multiple meanings • An open form is dialogical and opens multiple possibilities to see and understand it (compare to postmodern view) • A closed form represents or repeats one interpretation of reality (compare to modern view) (Liisa Ikonen 2006, pp. 20-21)

7. Making choices • Learning to make choices and aesthetic judgement is in the core of arts education • It entails perceiving qualitative differences and subtle nuances • It involves interpretive, reflective processes, also dialogue, articulation and negotiation

8. Challenges - and motivation - for dance artists and educators • Working through an open -interactive, dialogical, nonhierarhical - process with children and youngsters is a challenge • Emphazising presence, commitment and meaningful, transformative experiences may bring a very satisfying end result artistically, as well • Suspending own vision and being open to participants’ ideas may generate new and fresh artistic qualities and outcomes • The result may be different than the original ”vision”, but not necessarily for the worse

9. To close… • The kind of dance that we value informs our artistic and educational practices, but it is also connected to the kind of world we want to live in • Arts education can (and should) inform general education • Enhancing collaborative creative processes and surprising outcomes makes space for new knowledge, cultural understanding, transformation instead of transmission • This kind of approaches challenge the modernist conception on education • Joining art and education can transform both: a cultural, postmodern view on education