The arts as practice in the 21st century

From: Christian Teachers Journal, 21:3 (July 2013), pp. 20-23 the arts as practice in the st 21 century 20 The Christian Teachers Journal July 2013 Learning happens through our being and doing. We live in the world and we act in our daily lives. Learning is built in. The power of the arts is that they are naturally learned through actual practice: dancers learn to dance by choreographing and dancing; actors learn to act by writing, developing and putting on plays; musicians learn their craft through composing and performing; visual artists learn to paint, draw or sculpt through preparing to exhibit work; filmmakers make films; and so on. These things of course seem obvious. But addressing practices (in life, and art) has come of age it seems in the first decades of our new century. We live in an arts rich age. And we live in a time when all of the archives of human history, and thus the artifacts of human artistic practice, are becoming increasingly and more freely available to us. Discernment – deciding what to engage with and how deeply – is or should be our daily bread. I want to go beyond traditional ‘theorypractice’ or ‘academic-practical’ dichotomies, because a separation of ‘theory’ from ‘prac’ doesn’t really happen. Theory and practice are always intertwined and inseparable, even if the ‘theory’ part is not strongly articulated, even if we ‘know more than we can tell’ (as Polanyi put it1). To play a musical instrument you need to know where you put your fingers, so even when playing ‘by ear’ we find that ‘theory’ is not far away. (And when students ask, “Are we doing theory or prac today, sir?” my answer is always, “Yes!”) Practice means our daily practice, all the ways in which we act in our daily lives. Pedagogy is about such practice - ways of being and doing. David Smith (referencing the earlier work of David Hamilton) describes pedagogy as a place where you live, the word itself deriving from the medieval University of Paris student residences, called pedagogies, where the day was ordered along monastic lines, designed for student formation in the intellectual and spiritual dimensions, all under the guidance of the master of the house who set the rhythms of the day. So our schools and classrooms can become such pedagogies, places where students are welcome and where they are formed.2 Pedagogy is about creating and supporting environments and conditions that give learning opportunities – spaces and places where people can find work, build their skills and collaborate with like-minded people. Arts teachers naturally gravitate to creating these possibilities and such learning becomes a model for all learning. The reason for this is that arts teachers find themselves working to develop situations for their students that are ‘real world’ practices, not even emulations of the outside world but real world practice. Thus a concert or recital for a music student is a real concert, and its creation entails preparation as for any concert: learning parts, forming a band or finding accompanists to work with, rehearsal, preparation of instruments and equipment, venue preparation and setup, sound and technical production where appropriate, building an audience, performing to the audience. Parallel processes occur in the creation of a dance performance, or a theatre work, or an exhibition of visual art. Such processes and practices form the artist. Reflecting on practice, through viewing recordings of performances and engaging with the audience’s feedback naturally leads to improvement. So learning is built in to the doing. Quality and striving for excellence are also built in to the process: you simply want to be the best you can be when you perform. I want to also offer some insights and suggestions and models for practice from a number of recent Christian artisteducators, encouraging us to engage with contemporary knowledge in our arts pedagogy. In the examples I tend to refer to music practices, but this is readily translatable to other arts contexts. Exploring hospitality and hospitable spaces in school Henri Nouwen describes hospitality as critical for the classroom.3 As teachers we can assume the possibility of hospitality and as we work to make our classes hospitable spaces, we open the possibility for caring dialogue and communication. Many students lack an experience of open, equal, friendly relations and an experience of true dialogue with adults, as they may only ever have been spoken down to, patronised, ordered about or ignored by adults. So they may at first view hospitable invitations with suspicion, through fear, acted out in hostile or mocking language or stances. The way we teach, not just the ‘methods’ we use but our whole style of teaching and interacting with students as individuals and groups, our pedagogy, is a key way in which our faith is expressed. Arts classrooms and co-curricular work, readily enable the demonstration of hospitality and mutual affirmation, as teachers and students share skills and knowledge in developing collaborative arts practices, rehearsing together with students, supporting students in an accompaniment role, deferring to students’ leadership of ensembles (even if the teacher is an expert), encouraging ‘real world’ music ensemble practice, sharing of expertise in the rehearsal room, and experiencing mutual encouragement in the performance space. Imagination and the formation of desire “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (Augustine, Confessions, I.i.1) James KA Smith4 argues persuasively for a more comprehensive vision of Christian education, pressing us to expand our conception of education and to move away from viewing education as the imparting of information to instead seeing education as formation. The traditional western view of education, Smith argues, has tended to view humans as ‘thinking things’, ‘brains on a stick’ if you will, and thus sees that the transfer of information is the key activity of education. The Christian Teachers Journal July 2013 21 Smith makes a case for expanding our philosophical anthropology, that is, our understanding of who and what we understand humans to be, to seeing ourselves not primarily creatures who think and who live in their heads, but as creatures who act with their whole beings and who love and feel deeply. The biblical term for the ‘heart’ helps us here, better translated as the ‘gut’, the seat of emotions. It is not that we are not thinkers, argues Smith, but rather that we are more than thinkers. We are lovers. Smith goes on to point out that the formation of our loves comes through long practice, and that we become creatures of habit through our daily practice of the things we love. Yet education seems traditionally to insist on feeding our cognitive selves, our rational minds, as if everything we do originates there. Smith argues that our rightly-ordered love or desire in an Augustinian sense is what defines a Christian person. We are all creatures of love or desire. It is not that we love but what we love that determines our character. Artists are always practitioners, who embody and practice what they love and desire, so the arts again naturally engage us on a more than intellectual level. Our imaginations are formed through our practice, through realising in practice what we desire and conceive. The physical and embodied nature of musical instrument playing demonstrates this, for example as musicians improvise and engage their senses and their physical selves in attempting to perform what they imagine. Cultivating and creating culture What postures can Christians take toward culture? Andy Crouch calls Christians to be culture makers5 and presents a useful model to help us. In his view, Christians have historically taken one of six approaches to culture: they have condemned, critiqued, copied, consumed, cultivated, or created culture. Conservative Christians have been inclined to condemn popular culture, consume high culture, copy culture with Christian branded products, yet offer a low level of real critique of the practices of those around them, and with a low 22 The Christian Teachers Journal July 2013 level of commitment to cultivation of existing culture or creation of new culture. Crouch raises Jesus’ parable of the sower (Mark 4:3–20 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed…”) as a model for our communication. He describes this as a parable about parables, a parable about cultural stories, truth and knowledge: the Word ( Jesus the Word; the Word encompassing all truth; the Word as the gospel - the story or truth of Christ being Lord of all; the Word as our lives embodying our calling). If we are to understand and know our culture as Christians and as people finding our way in the world, we need artists to help us. Artists give us not just new or nice things to hear or see or know about or some decoration or entertainment but they offer us new ways of seeing, hearing, experiencing and knowing our world, as they create the very substance of our world. Insights from our lives as teachers can offer seeds that may bear fruit, as students follow up their own artistic and cultural inclinations. All around us are what Crouch calls cultural artifacts. How do we understand how particular cultural artifacts (for example art work, musical work, technology or human creation) fit into a broader cultural story? Crouch offers a framework: 1. What does this cultural artifact assume about what the world is? 2. What does it assume about what the world should be? 3. What does this cultural artifact make possible? 4. What does it make difficult or impossible? 5. What new forms of culture are created in response to this artifact? These are to do with meaning making and sense making (1 and 2); the horizons of possibility (3 and 4); and the future of culture (5). As a Christian I am profoundly moved by artists’ insights into the art of our time. They help me to see, hear, experience, and know the world in new and deeper ways. They offer me new possibilities for how the world can be. Artists are always practitioners, who embody and practice what they love and desire, so the arts again naturally engage us on a more than intellectual level. They stretch my knowledge of what is possible. They take me in new directions. Artists are often radical breakers of boundaries: between art forms, between what has previously been considered art. The best offer deep insights into the human condition. They may offer optimism in a sometimes bleak and dark world. And the respect they show each other in engaging in collaborative work, and their humility towards their role as artistic creators can be a model for how we should all treat each other in the contemporary world. Of course humans are flawed, or sometimes profoundly miss the mark, so I present the ideal case here! For further reading and reflection: hospitality and hospitable spaces in school David I Smith quotes Jerome Bruner: “Any choice of pedagogical practice implies a conception of the learner and may, in time, be adopted by him or her as the appropriate way of thinking about the learning process. For a choice of pedagogy inevitably communicates a conception of the learning process and the learner. Pedagogy is never innocent. It is a medium that carries its own message.”6 Consider this in relation to hospitality in your classroom and teaching experience. How can arts teachers and students learn from each other? How can we work to create hospitable spaces in our arts classrooms and cocurricular groups? Read Henri J M Nouwen, Reaching Out, HarperCollins, London, 1998. Read David I Smith, Learning from the Stranger: Christian Faith and Cultural Diversity, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2009. For further reading and reflection: cultivating and creating culture Apply Crouch’s frameworks to your own work as an artist and teacher. In what ways have you/ we condemned, critiqued, copied, consumed, cultivated, or created culture? Find examples in your own life or in Christian or church media. Find cultural artifacts from your own experience of which you and your students may ask the five questions given above. For further reading and reflection: imagination and the formation of desire Consider the implications of rightly-ordered love driven by our habitual practices as a principle. How might this influence our teaching practice in the arts? What are some of the examples of spiritual formation practices or spiritual disciplines from the history of the church (e.g. Smith & Smith [2011] have collected together a number of case studies of explorations in the application of historic Christian practices to teaching and learning, including: lectio divina, hospitality, fellowship, testimony, breaking bread, studiousness, discernment, pilgrimage, divine office, liturgical calendar, Sabbathkeeping, honouring the body, the labyrinth)? How might these or other practices be applied or adapted in arts teaching contexts? Read James KA Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 2009. Read James KA Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 2013. Read David I Smith & James KA Smith (eds), Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2011. As a Christian I am profoundly moved by artists’ insights into the art of our time. They help me to see, hear, experience, and know the world in new and deeper ways. Andrew Tredinnick BSocStud BMus Syd, MTeach UWS [email protected] Andrew, a former social worker, professional musician and university publications manager, came to high school teaching in his mid 40s and now teaches Music, Theory of Knowledge and Christian Living at St Paul’s Grammar School in Cranebrook NSW. Footnotes 1 Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Routledge, London, 1966. 2 David Hamilton, Towards a Theory of Schooling, Basingstoke, Falmer Press, 1989, quoted in David I Smith, ‘Does God dwell in the detail? The daily grind of Christian teaching’, lecture delivered at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 19 April 2001, p. 8. www.stapleford-centre.org/files/ files/David_Smith-Does_God_dwell_in_ the_detail.pdf 3 Henri JM Nouwen, Reaching Out, HarperCollins, London, 1998. 4 James KA Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, 2009. 5 Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, IVP, Downers Grove, 2008. 6 Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1996, p.63; quoted in David I Smith, ‘What is Excellent Teaching? The Question of Faith and Pedagogy’ inaugural address, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 16 September, 2004, p. 5. http:// www.calvin.edu/kuyers/lecture.php?ID=6 Read Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, IVP, Downers Grove, 2008. The Christian Teachers Journal July 2013 23