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Arts at the Center Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein

Michigan State University, USA

rootbern@msu.edu, rootber3@msu.edu

Let us begin with the proposition that the 21st century demands renewed attention to creative imagination. As

Mitchel Resnick, of MITs Media Lab, writes: In todays rapidly changing world, people must continually come up

with creative solutions to unexpected problems. Success is based not only on what you know or how much you

know, but on your ability to think and act creatively (1). Solutions to complex and intractable problems such as

global warming, hunger, poverty, systemic injustice and eradicable disease will require thinkers and doers who

can bring to bear new combinations of knowledge and know-how in economic, political and cultural arenas.

Traditional expertise, traditional training will not be enough. It follows, then, that we must school our problem-

solvers in new ways. We must prepare our young to envision as-yet-unheard-of possibilities that vastly improve

the lives of more people and simultaneously reaffirm authentic living. In short, we must educate for imagination

and creativity. To this educational enterprise, the arts provide the key.

To make the case we focus on the role of arts in the high-level pursuit of science, invention and business. While

many of our examples come from the European-American tradition, the patterns we describe apply worldwide.

The arts have always been and will always be at the center of creative practice in every discipline in every culture.

We support this argument by demonstrating four theses that have formed the backbone of much of our research:

1) arts and crafts underpin innovation in science and technology; 2) scientists can invent new arts and artists can

discover new sciences; 3) arts and crafts correlate with creativity in all disciplines, from literature to business; and

4) they do so because they involve mastery of creative process and its tools for thinking.

Thesis 1: Arts and Crafts Foster Scientific Creativity

Thesis 1, that the arts and crafts foster scientific creativity, was first proposed by J. H. vant Hoff, first Nobel Prize

winner in Chemistry. Imagination plays a role both in the ability to do scientific research as well as in the urge to

exploit this capability he observed. I have been prompted to investigate whether or not this [imaginative]

ability also manifests itself in famous scientists in ways other than their researches. A study of more than two

hundred biographies showed that this was indeed the case, and in large measure (2). Van Hoff found that

Galileo was an artist and a craftsman; Kepler a musician and composer; Sir Humphrey Davy an excellent poet;

and so on.

As our own research indicates, artistic or craft talent turns out to be typical of Nobel Prize winners and other

eminent scientists. Vant Hoff, himself, had artistic hobbies. He played the flute well, wrote poetry in four

languages, made models of many kinds and enjoyed sending out hand-made New Years cards. The French

Nobel laureate Alexis Carrell put the lace-making he learned as a child from his mother to good use when he

invented the stitching techniques that have made open heart surgery and transplants possible. Dorothy Hodgkin,

British Nobel laureate, learned from drawing how to think in three dimensions as a crystallographer. She

illustrated her parents archeological finds as a teen, and later her own crystallographic discoveries as well.

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Scientific vocation accompanied by artistic avocation can be found worldwide. Hideki Yukawa, Japanese Nobel

Prize winner in Physics, displayed a wide range of talents that include performing traditional Japanese songs and

practicing traditional calligraphy. His fellow physicist and Nobel laureate, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, was a painter and

photographer. Physicist Homi Bhabha, architect of Indias scientific programming in the 1950s, balanced his own

scientific research with painting, musical composition and playwrighting.

In many cases, these science vocations and artistic avocations intertwine. American physicist Robert R. Wilson,

who had a second career as a professional sculptor, is best known for designing both the supercollider at

FermiLab and also its architecture. He wrote at length about how the creative process of designing a

supercollider is the same as that of designing a sculpture. Indeed, FermiLab looks like a modern cathedral

because he believed that the best science is as beautiful and awe-inspiring as the best art. Similarly, Harvard

physicist and chemist Eric Heller models complex physicochemical processes with equations and then turns

these equations into images using computer graphics. He makes the most breathtaking of these graphics into

pieces of art. And sometimes that art reveals characteristics of his mathematical models not apparent from the

equations alone, thereby yielding new scientific insight.

Scientists have also relied on crafts for imaginative as well as experimental skill. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the

youngest Nobel laureate ever, learned from his artist mother to draw and paint, and his physicist father to work

with wood, metals, and other materials. The working scientist has need of hand knowledge, he wrote, for theory

is nothing if it cannot be reduced to novel experiment or a new piece of apparatus. Certainly this kind of

craftsmanship amply repaid Luis Alvarez, who owed a great deal of his inventive genius in modern physics to

visual and mechanical skills developed in technical high school. Likewise physician Virginia Apgar, known for

recognizing and combining the ten physiological functions that ascertain an infants health at birth, learned her

extraordinary observational skills as a trained musician and as a craftsman who made her own musical

instruments.

Statistical studies back up these examples and confirm that arts and crafts foster scientific ability. In our largest

and most recent study (3), we examined the biographies and autobiographies of all 510 Nobel Prize winners in

science (to 2005) and compared them with the biographies of 1634 United Kingdom Royal Society members,

1266 members of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and 4406 members of a non-elite scientific

organization, Sigma Xi, which is open to membership by any practicing scientist. Compared with these typical

scientists, Nobel laureates are at least 2 times more likely to be photographers; 4 times more likely to be

musicians; 17 times more likely to be artists; 15 times more likely to be craftsmen; 25 times more likely to be

writers of non-professional writing, such as poetry or fiction; and 22 times more likely to be performers, such as

actors, dancers or magicians. An ongoing study of engineers appears to be yielding similar differences between

the average and the most successful engineers, with arts, writing, and crafts avocations being the best predictors

of professional success.

Thesis 2: Scientists Invent Art; Artists Invent Science

If arts and crafts foster better scientific and engineering ability, the equation also works in reverse as thesis 2:

Scientists invent new arts and artists invent new sciences and technologies. Nobel laureate Roger Guillemin,

discoverer of the first peptide hormones, certainly added a new dimension to the visual arts. When modeling

molecules with the first computer aided design programs, he quickly realized and exploited their aesthetic

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potential. He is now widely recognized as one of the founders of electronic art. In similar fashion the chemist

Lejaren Hiller transformed music. He, too, obtained access to one of the first computers for his chemical research

and quickly turned to programming the first computer-generated compositions, including his famous ILIAC Suite.

Hiller left chemistry in mid-career to compose full time.

Conversely, early 20th century American painter Abbott Thayer invented a new science. He mixed his art vocation

with his avocation, which was natural history, and in the process discovered that animals adapt to their

environments through camouflage. Both the modern science and the technology of camouflage owe their

existence to his application of a trained artistic eye to scientific questions. About the same time, American dancer

Loie Fuller pioneered a new kind of dance in the music halls of Paris, and did so with a series of patented

inventions that helped usher in the modern era of fluorescent costume and special stage lighting effects. More

recently, sculptor Wallace Walker has contributed an entirely new form of geometry with his paper sculpture

IsoAxis , developed at some length with geometer Doris Schattschneider (4).

The impact that such science-art interactions may have on society are often overlooked, witness the all-but-

forgotten example of actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil, who together invented a way to encode

electronic information called frequency hopping. First applied to weaponry in World War II, frequency hopping

now permits cell phones to send messages in encrypted forms that are largely safe from interference. Who would

guess that arts training lies behind such a revolutionary invention?! Yet we must consider, as MIT-trained

engineer, composer and artist Robert Mueller wrote in his book, The Science of Art (1967), that Art may be a

necessary condition for constructing the new consciousness from which future science gets its structural realities

to match nature, in which case it is more important than we generally admit.

Thesis 3: Arts and Crafts Correlate with Creativity in All Disciplines

Since the 1920s, studies have shown that most people who achieve eminence in one field display more than

average ability in one or more other fields as well. These are our Renaissance men and women. Yet the same

kind of breadth breeds success for other people, too. As one Israeli study concluded, the only reliable predictor of

professional achievement, no matter the field, is the individuals pursuit of an intellectually demanding avocation

over a long period of time (5). Polymathy developed skill in more than one discipline or field of interest is

highly correlated with vocational success.

As a means of investigating our third thesis that arts and crafts correlate with creativity in disciplines from

literature to business, we have been tracking polymathy in a number of ways. Recently, we amassed information

on the avocational interests of Nobel Prize winners in Economics, Peace and Literature and collated it with our

data on Nobel scientists (6). Overall, Nobel laureates have about three times more adult avocations than the

general U.S. public. As you might expect, each Nobel group has a distinct and different pattern of avocational

distribution. Here we make two simple observations: 1) there are very nearly the same proportions of Nobel

scientists with writing pursuits as Nobel writers with science pursuits and 2) the percentage of science laureates

with avocations in the arts is very nearly identical to the percentage of literature laureates with arts avocations.

Literature laureates with strong avocational interests in the visual arts, music, dance and drama include

Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet, short-story writer, novelist, dramatist and educator who won the Nobel

Prize in 1913. He was also a composer, setting many hundreds of his poems to music; late in life, he took up

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painting. Derek Walcott, the Caribbean writer from St. Lucia who won the Nobel in 1992, has devoted much of his

life to painting as well as writing. And Gao Xingjian, the Chinese novelist, short story writer, and dramatist who

won the Nobel Prize in 2000, pursues a second career in painting -- indeed before winning the Nobel, he made

his living from his work as an artist.

Nobel Prize winners in other categories have also pursued one or other of the arts. Dag Hammarskjold,

posthumously awarded the Peace Prize in 1961, was not only a statesman, but a philosopher-writer and amateur

photographer. Albert Schweitzer, who won the Peace Prize in 1952 for his work as a medical missionary and

theologian, was well-known as a concert organist.

Beyond Nobel circles the arts continue to play strong avocational roles. As the two books, The Writers Brush

(2007) and Doubly Gifted (1986), make clear, the writer-artist combination is particularly common (7). Similarly,

individuals at work in business also place arts at the center of their interests. John D. Rockefeller IV founded the

Business Committee for the Arts after observing that companies fostering arts among employees and

communities were much more profitable than those that did not. Yet another book, The Art of Leadership (1998)

explores how arts stimulate creativity and profitability in several dozen companies around the world (8). Suk-Jean

Kang, former CEO of General Electric Korea and now CEO of LG Electronics provides a case in point. As CEO of

GE Korea, he arranged to take one full month off each year to paint. Not only did this time away from work

stimulate new ideas for Suk-Jean Kang, but it also permitted his coworkers to implement their skills and

strategies in his absence, building leadership.

Polymathic individuals often remark on the fit between vocation and avocation. American Charles Ives, at work in

the insurance industry even as he composed his iconoclastic music, made the two pursuits from the same cloth:

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality and substance, he is reported to have

said. The fabric weaves itself whole. My work in music helped my business and my work in business helped my

music (9). In this understanding Ives, like many other polymaths, linked his interests into an integrated network

of enterprise, correlative talents and creative habits (10). Whenever and wherever people meld the multiple

hats they wear, the same tendency to synthesize vocation and avocation is at work.

Thesis 4: Arts and Crafts Exercise Creative Imagination

Arts and crafts play a central role in these networks of enterprise because they readily exercise cognitive skills

necessary to imagination and to creativity. We base this fourth thesis on our work in Sparks of Genius, The 13

Thinking Tools of the Worlds Most Creative People (1999). Researching what hundreds of successful people in a

wide range of professions have had to say about their imaginative and creative abilities, we found a common set

of skills: observing, imaging, abstracting, pattern recognizing, pattern forming, analogizing, empathizing, body

thinking, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming and synthesizing. These are not esoteric skills,

available only to the highly talented or trained, however. These are skills available to everyone; they can be

exercised and honed. And because they are common to all problem-solving endeavors across the arts and

sciences, the humanities and technologies, they articulate the connections between disciplines that foster the

synergies of innovation.

In Sparks of Genius and elsewhere we draw out the profound role that each thinking tool plays in the arts, in the

sciences and in the bridging of the two (11). Consider here how the ancient art of origami, or paper folding, has

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explored the possibilities of dimensional thinking for many centuries, providing artists and laymen alike with the

experience of transforming between flat planes of paper and the spatial volumes of paper sculpture. Surprisingly,

the deep understanding of dimensionality embodied in origami has only recently been appreciated outside the

craft itself. There is now an entire field of origami engineering, one of whose outcomes has been the invention of

origami stents that can be inserted into blood vessels in their folded-up form, and then expanded to keep the

blood vessel open after they are placed. Mathematicians have also recently discovered that origami articulates

an entirely new form of geometry, with rules all of its own.

Such a confluence of art and science achieves a synthesis of subjective and objective understanding that may be

called synosia. Aesthetic feeling, craft and scientific knowing all come together in that explosion of likeness

between unlike things that Jacob Bronowski saw at the heart of creative imagination (12). The contexts and

purposes of origami art, medical stents and newly discovered geometries appear worlds apart, and yet they

share the same underlying cognitive tools and foundations. It is in the nature of disciplines to carve out

boundaries that inhibit the cross-fertilization of ideas, data and techniques. It is in the nature of imaginative

thinking to permeate these boundaries and to pull unlike elements into synthesis.

So we return to where we began. Imaginative tools for thinking -- readily learned in the arts, practically applied in

science, technology, business and other public professions -- make creative synthesis and invention possible. If

we are to educate for creativity, as the 21st century challenges us to do, we must educate for imagination and its

thinking tools as well. Sparks of Genius suggests eight strategies for achieving this goal; including these three: 1)

Teach tools for thinking, so that students learn to develop imaginative skills and original ideas. 2) Teach creative

process, so that students learn how ideas and things are imagined and made. 3) Place arts on an equal footing

with sciences and other core subjects, so that students learn the imaginative thinking and expression that leads

to discovery and invention. The practice of arts and the development of correlative talents should be required

for all students from kindergarten through college.

Let us end with three take-home messages. First, arts and crafts develop skills, tools, concepts, structures, and

knowledge that are useful to many other disciplines; indeed, their practice correlates with professional creativity

in the sciences and technologies, in literature and business. Second, the arts particularly exercise the creative

imagination and its thinking tools and develop mastery of creative process. Third, any effort to educate for

creativity must therefore include arts at the center. This role for the arts supposes a utilitarian value and purpose,

but so it is for all disciplines at the hub of education. Just as we do not teach mathematics solely or mainly to train

new mathematicians, nor teach languages solely or mainly to produce poets and novelists, we cannot teach the

arts and crafts simply to educate more artists and craftspeople. Arts and crafts look out upon a much larger

horizon. Arts and craftsand the thinking tools they exercisebelong at the center of education because they

can and will ignite the creative imagination vital to those innovations in science, politics, and culture that must

lead us into the future.

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References

(1) Resnick, M. (2007). Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society. Learning & Leading with Technology,

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) (December/January 2007-08, pp. 18-22).

(2) Vant Hoff, J. H. (1967). Imagination in Science. (G.F. Springer, Trans.). Molecular Biology, Biochemistry and

Biophysics, I, pp. 1-18. Originally published 1878.

(3) Root-Bernstein, R., Allen, L., Beach, L., Bhadul, R., Fast, J., Hosey, C., Kremkow, B., Lapp, J., Lonc, K.,

Pawelec, K., Podufaly, A., Russ, C., Tennant, L., Vrtis, E., & Weinlander, S. (2008). Arts Foster Scientific Success:

Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma Xi Members. Journal of Psychology of

Science and Technology, I (2), pp. 51-63.

(4) Schattschneider, D. & Walker, W. (1977). M.C. Escher Kaleidocycles. Corte Madera, California: Pomegranate

Artbooks, Inc.

(5) Milgram, R., Hong, E., Shavit, Y., & Peled, R. (1997). Out of school activities in gifted adolescents as a

predictor of vocational choice and work accomplishment in young adults. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education,

8, pp. 111-120. See also Milgram, R. & Hong, E. (1993). Creative Thinking and Creative Performance in

Adolescents as Predictors of Creative Attainments in Adults: A Follow-up Study after 18 Years. In R. Subotnik and

K. Arnold (Eds.). Beyond Terman: Longitudinal Studies in Contemporary Gifted Education. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex;

and Hong, E. Milgram, R., & Whiston, S. (1993). Leisure Activities in Adolescence as a Predictor of Occupational

Choice in Young Adults: A Longitudinal Study. Journal of Career Development, 19, pp. 221-29.

(6) For preliminary data on literature Nobels, see Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-Bernstein, M. Artistic Scientists and

Scientific Artists: The Link Between Polymathy and Creativity. In R. Sternberg, E. Grigorenko & J. Singer (Eds.),

Creativity From Potential to Realization (pp. 127-151). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

(7) Friedman, D. (2007). The Writers Brush, Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Writers. Minneapolis, MN:

Mid-List Press. Hjerter, K. (1986). Doubly Gifted, The Author as Visual Artist. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

(8) Finn, D. & Jedlicka, J. (1998). The Art of Leadership, Building Business-Arts Alliances. New York: Abbeville

Press.

(9) Ives quoted by Marianne Moore in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 1963-1984. Series 2, p. 86.

(10) For networks of enterprise, see Gruber, H. (1984). Darwin on Man.: A Psychological Study of Scientific

Creativity. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. For correlative talents, see Root-Bernstein, R. (1989).

Discovering, Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

(11) Due to space limitations, the illustrated discussion of a number of the thinking tools and their creative role in

art and science in our keynote address is not rendered here. Readers may refer to Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-

Bernstein, M. (1999). Sparks of Genius. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin for tool descriptions and examples.

Additional material may be found in the source cited in footnote 6, above, and in Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-

Bernstein, M. (2003). Intuitive Tools for Thinking, in L.Shavanina (Ed.), International Handbook of Innovation (pp.

37-387). New York: Erlbaum.

(12) Bronowski, J. (1965). Science and Human Values. New York: Harper & Row. Originally published 1956.

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UNESCO report of the survey results on the implementation of the Road Map for Arts Education UNESCO artsedu@unesco.org Executive Summary

The Road Map for Arts Education is a reference document that aims to explore the role of arts education in

meeting the need for creativity and cultural awareness in the 21st Century, while placing emphasis on the

strategies required to introduce or promote arts education in the learning environment. From this conceptual

framework, all UNESCO Member States interested in initiating or developing arts education practices can mould

their own national policy guidelines, adapted to their socio-cultural specificities. With the Road Map, UNESCO

advocates the essential role of arts education within societies, to create a common ground of understanding for

all stakeholders.

The development of the Road Map for Arts Education was a lengthy and comprehensive consultation process.

The document was first elaborated by a group of experts and UNESCO, then presented at the First World

Conference on Arts Education (Lisbon, 2006) and later revised and updated, following recommendations from

NGOs and Member States. The Road Map was finally distributed to the UNESCO Member States in November

2007 in English and French and then translated into Spanish and Russian following popular demand.

More than a year after this distribution, UNESCO launched a wide-ranging survey in order to assess the

implementation of the Road Map in its 193 Member States. Through its National Commissions, the Organization

relayed this document to Ministries of both Education and Culture. The aim of this exercise was threefold: to learn

whether the Road Map was being applied and to what extent it was influencing policy decisions at national level;

to act as a reminder of the importance of the UNESCO reference document and encourage its use; finally, to

assess the situation of arts education in the responding countries. Thus, this survey not only acted as a catalyst

for the implementation of the Road Map, but provided precious knowledge on arts education around the world.

The Member States responses also contributed greatly to the Second World Conference, inspiring one of its

main themes and the topics for a number of workshops. They also encouraged a more integral participation of

these States in the conference through preparatory consultations.

Over the last year, the number of responses to this mass inquiry has risen to reach an impressive 47 percent (93

responses). This great yield highlights a number of issues key to the development of arts education: there is an

undeniable interest in arts education and its implementation, notably in developing countries, showing that this

field is not reserved to the elite few but on the contrary relevant to all; the Road Map has had its desired impact

on Member States, sensitising them to this innovative way of approaching education and society and helping

them to better integrate arts education in both formal and informal education.

Note: As with any survey, not all respondents provided answers to all questions. However, the number of empty

responses was rarely above 5 percent of total returned questionnaires, giving the survey full statistical value and

representation.

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The Road Map for Arts Education has benefited from wide propagation and has been distributed in more

than two thirds of the responding countries. It was mainly diffused to elected officials, less to higher

education or cultural institutions and sometimes directly to schools. Where the framework had not yet been

distributed at the time of the response, the questionnaire served as a reminder of the importance UNESCO

places on arts education. Projects have been elaborated or implemented with direct reference to the Road

Map in half of the respondents countries, two thirds of which are already in application. Despite not having

direct reference to the UNESCO document, projects for arts education exist in most of the other countries.

Contributions were sent from all UNESCO regions: Africa (17), the Arab States (14), Asia and the Pacific

(17), Europe and North America (36), and Latin America and the Caribbean (9). The variety of the

responses transcends regional barriers and shows not only the diversity but also the similarities of the

situation of and interest in arts education around the globe: an African country may share the same vision

on the role of arts education as a European one, while a Caribbean island can encounter the same

problems as a Pacific counterpart.

The survey uncovered a strong consensus from all respondents to broaden the Road Map to populations outside

of schools. Most suggest that the document should address most if not all of the population, young or old,

parent or craftsperson. Furthermore, one third of all answers stated that it would be useful to expand the Road

Map to specialised entities, such as cultural or educational institutions, NGOs and arts groups. Finally, a small

group proposed to provide a shorter version for use at a local level, to sensitise communities generally distant

from decision makers to the importance of arts education in their society.

The high number of responses provided a rich source of information regarding the situation of arts education

around the world. The development of individual capabilities, including cognitive and creative capacities was

identified as the main aim for arts education in half of the responses. While this field was rarely identified as a

means to promote the expression of cultural diversity, it was frequently viewed as being crucial in improving the

overall quality of education and key to upholding the human right to education and cultural participation.

However, there are several obstacles to reaching theses aims. The main one in nearly half responding

countries is lack of funding. Other obstacles that need to be overcome are, in order of frequency, the difficulty of

applying arts education to current education systems, lack of awareness from relevant actors and finally lack of

cooperation from stakeholders involved.

The main source of funding for arts education with very few exceptions is national government funding. This is

sometimes complemented by local government funding when the States power and resource distribution is more

regionally oriented, in federal states for example. The responses highlight that even if public or private

foundations and individual donors provide some funding in the field of arts education in some countries, it is in no

way comparable to the scale of governmental funding.

On average, two ministries are in charge of arts education in each country, with up to four in a few cases. This

shows that this field is considered relevant by ministries of both education or higher education and culture. In

countries where more than one ministry is involved in arts education, the majority of cross-ministry collaborations

concern the co-elaboration of common programmes and, to a lesser extent, the joint development of laws or

policies. The responses highlight that the co-elaboration of a common budget for arts education between

ministries is carried out in only a minority of cases. Overall, these collaborations are encouraging for the future as

25

there needs to be strong inter-ministerial cooperation between education and culture officials if arts education is

to encompass a wide range of issues, from formal education to socio-cultural dimensions.

This trend is also reflected to some extent by the terminology used to indicate what UNESCO refers to as arts

education. There is a strong dominance of the term Arts Education in countries, but the expression Arts and

Cultural Education is also widely used, showing the understanding in certain Member States that this discipline

not only refers to the teaching of arts, but also a broader education of all cultural aspects of a society.

Regarding arts education actors themselves, they benefit from various forms of education to raise their

awareness and develop their knowledge and skills in most countries. Arts teachers receive such training the

most, in two thirds of countries, whereas teachers of general subjects and artists or cultural educators do so in

approximately half of the responding States. This education consists nearly always of continuous training, such

as internships, seminars, workshops and the like. The dissemination of written resources, however important

and wide-spread, is not as common a practice, the more interactive training being favoured over a more

academic approach.

Arts education is not just limited to the formal education environment. As stated in a large majority of responses,

this field benefits out-of-school children and young people, as well as disabled people and adult vocational

trainees. Other groups include senior citizens and prisoners and to a lesser extent, indigenous peoples, sick

people or immigrant populations. These activities serve mainly as a form of social integration for these different

groups, as well as being complementary to school education or even leisure activities and recreation, depending

on the populations and the average leisure time available to them in their respective countries.

Research on arts education is undertaken on a regular basis in more than two-thirds of responding countries.

The primary subjects of this research are varied, with the more frequent areas of studies being the evaluation of

arts education related policies, and training for arts education practitioners, be they teachers, cultural

professionals, artists or others. The assessment of the impact of arts education is also a regular research

subject, however, there is further need for work to be done on the role played by arts education in socio-cultural

empowerment.

The strong interest and involvement of Member States in the Road Map and arts education in general reflected in

this survey is encouraging for the future of this field. Aided by this conceptual framework, these countries have

or will be able to develop their own ways of initiating, promoting and expanding activities related to arts education,

inside and outside of schools. However, the survey highlighted an area not sufficiently covered in the Road Map,

which is the socio-cultural dimension of arts education. The responses emphasized the need to enlarge the

perspective of arts education and the Road Map to encompass this dimension. Indirectly inviting UNESCO to

approach this request through its Second World Conference, the Member States have shown that they support

the UNESCO Road Map for Arts Education as being a suitable guide for the current development of arts

education at national level. They also believed that this Conference could be an ideal opportunity to go further,

in order to provide in addition to a long-term tool a set of objectives that would enable the sustainable integration

of arts education into every facet of society.

The final report on this survey will be available on the UNESCO Arts Education website

(www.unesco.org/culture/en/artseducation) after the Second World Conference on Arts Education.

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27

Strengthening the socio-cultural dimensions of arts education Jean-Pierre Daogo Guingan University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

guingane@yahoo.fr

Education

All societies, regardless of their level of evolution, elaborate an educational system whose main objective is to

assure the social integration of its members. Through this integration, each individual is helped through

understanding, assimilation, the acquisition of experiences, knowledge, know-how and established rules to

guarantee themselves certain living conditions alongside their fellow humans that make it possible to be a

dynamic and productive actor in society.

Those whom this education will not have succeeded in touching, in forming, constitute a group of individuals

existing on the fringes of society. Proper education should be flexible in order to make room for the personality of

each individual to bloom and blossom. It must also be rigid in order to establish clear rules of the social game, in

which respect for others makes peaceful cohabitation possible.

Education makes it possible to draw a collective identity for a social group. This recognized and accepted identity

is what is handed down, from generation to generation, to all those called upon to join or who belong to the

particular community.

Arts education

Arts education, a component of general education, is of capital importance.

It contributes to developing an individuals:

Sensitivity

Emotion

Perception of the other

Ability to compare (which leads to the development of reason)

Vision of the world

It opens the distant immediate environment in a spirit of:

Pluralism:

The world belongs to all of the elements inhabiting it.

Diversity:

Each element constitutes an entity with its own particularities (size, colour, alive, dead, etc.).

It gives the individual ways of expressing the world and of expressing themselves on the world:

The Arts can be tools of expression :

Writing

Theatre

Music

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Danse

Fine arts

Etc.

The Arts can be tools of exploration :

Of the individual (their interior)

Of the behaviour of the social being

Of the community

The Arts can be tools of contemplation of the surrounding world

As it is perceived, arts education forms subjective witnesses of the world who express themselves

according to :

Their own sensitivity

Their personal history

Their interpretation of the world

Globalisation and its challenges

Arts education, under the pressure of globalisation, may tend to :

Eliminate distinctive identities

Impose single ways of thinking, feeling and seeing

Standardizing human behaviour

Working against all forms of diversity

The objective of globalization seems to lead to one single kind of human being with the same tastes and

behaviours; in short it seems to lead to a kind of uniqueness that facilitates economic transactions.

And yet, as a critic justly writes, the mission of [arts education] cannot be to train individuals capable of

responding only to the expectations and demands of world economic and financial powers; but it must

prepare women and men who are themselves capable of creating the society in which they want to live

[] Arming ourselves with the conditions necessary to avoid going in this negative direction, means

putting all our efforts on the side of Man; it means preparing him to use the means that he has within

himself: creativity, a critical mind, intellectual independence, freedom in the sense of the complete use

of oneself (Pierre VAN CRAEYNEST Les pratiques artistiques de lenseignement gnral in Art en

germe p. 14)

We must avoid going in the negative direction that Pierre VAN CRAEYNEST speaks about and provide

an arts education capable of forming individuals who are world citizens by virtue of their universality but

who are also strongly rooted to their lands.

While it is true that in the search of particular identities we attain universality, it is also necessary in arts education

programmes to reinforce the socio-cultural dimensions so that while being universal, the artists of tomorrow and

their works also continue to be singular, and remain the products of identifiable cultures.

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Some avenues of reflection on reinforcing the socio-cultural dimension in Arts Education

The use of local languages

Languages are one of the most important elements in cultural diversity

Languages are an opening to the deep culture of people

The practice of languages enriches the personality of the learner

The use of local languages guarantees the destination of expressions towards a priority public, and their

being rooted in a culture shared both by the artist and by the public

Involvement of local traditional artists

Guarantees a good handing down of heritage to the new generations

Link between a new public and a traditional public Broadening of the public

Shrinks the generational gap and strengthens social cohesion

Exposes traditionalists to new artistic forms and techniques

Protection and conservation of traditional tools and instruments (music, fine arts, dance costumes, etc.)

The use of local cultural heritage

Written literature

Oral literature (stories, legends, myths, etc)

Country sides (rivers, mountains, volcanoes, etc.)

Customs (costumes, traditions, folklore etc.)

History

The use of places dedicated to Arts Education

Places dedicated to arts education will be, as much as possible, chosen based on their social or cultural

significance.

The arts education programme should at least include visits to important sites of local culture (historical

palaces, museums, Religious sites, etc.)

Discovery of local artists

Support the learner in discovering and getting to know the works of local artists in their discipline who

are known and recognized for their quality, before they are put in contact with artists from other cultures.

Support the learner in becoming interested in the works of current problem or marginal artists. It is

often these artists who have the most impact on the learners imagination.

Encourage the decasting of arts education

There exist communities in which certain artistic practices are linked to particular casts. In such settings, arts

education only reaches a minority (the members of these communities). To the extent that Arts Education is good

for everyone, it would be desirable to find ways to involve the maximum number of people in such activities.

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Responding to the challenges of arts education: Tensions between traditional and contemporary practices and transcending geo-cultural differences? Cultural Dialogue in Music: From the Personal to the Collaborative Hi Kyung Kim

University of California, Santa Cruz, Korea/USA

hkim@ucsc.edu

It is a privilege and a pleasure to be speaking at the UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education here in

Seoul, Korea. I would like to begin by describing some key moments in my personal history that relate to our

topic in 1982 at the University of California, Berkeley, when I felt a sense of difference as a newly-arrived

Korean-American; in 1989 in Paris, when I found my cultural identity again called into question, and now 28 years

later, when I presented the fourth Pacific Rim Music Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz just last

month.

I was born in Seoul and spent the first 25 years of my life here. I graduated from the College of Music at Seoul

National University with a BA degree in Music Composition in 1977. In 1980 my father, who was a Presbyterian

Minister, responding to a desire he had of helping Korean immigrants in the United States, moved our family to

California, where I have lived ever since. I went to the University of California, Berkeley for my graduate

education in 1982. I knew I was a new arrival, so when the shock of a different educational and musical culture

hit me at UC Berkeley I was somewhat prepared. I realized immediately during the first composition seminar with

the other graduate students that I had a different cultural background and different inspiration than they had. I

knew from that moment my own Korean tradition was deeply embedded in me. My first composition I wrote there

was based on the essence of the Korean folk song, A-Ri-Rang, a piece called A Ri written for voice and string

quartet.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to study for two years in Paris as part of a grant from UC Berkeley, and it was there

that I received quite an unexpected cultural shock. I was studying in the DEA (Diplme d'tudes Approfondies)

program at the IRCAM (Institut de Rechreche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) and cole Normale

Supriere, and in a seminar I played a recording of the premiere performance of the first movement of my

composition, Islands in the Bay, a Percussion Concerto. To my surprise, some of my classmates commented

that I was writing "American" Music. This came as a complete shock, and my own cultural identity suddenly

became mysterious to me. In America I had been considered a Korean composer, and now here in Paris I was

being called an American composer. I was confused and did not know how to proceed in my music with such a

comment. I was helped by the comments of two of my teachers at that time. I asked Jean-Baptiste Barrire, who

was the director of the Pedagogy department at IRCAM, about this comment. He advised me, Why be bothered

by others? Just be yourself and find your roots. Dont you have your own heritage to study? That was an

important comment for me--simple and direct. Around the same time, the late German-Korean composer, YUN

Isang told me that I should try to respond naturally to whatever I have in me. These words from my elders gave

me great guidance. Since that time I have known that I had those two cultures within me, and that I was a

KoreanAmerican composer.

I was confronted by the differences between musical traditions in 1985, when I returned to Korea to begin a

deeper study of Korean traditional music. I had training as a Western composer/musician since I was eight years

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old. Moving to America had reawakened my desire to learn about my Korean culture, and I was naturally

attracted to Korean traditional music. I was able to go to Korea in the summer of 1985 to study Korean music in

all areas: history, theory, performance. Thats when I met my teacher, PARK, Eun-Ha, Senior performer in

Samulnori (folk percussion ensemble) at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Her teaching

was focused on the traditional method--the oral tradition, without music scores or recordings, and therefore we

needed to stay extremely focused in order to remember what she just played for us. I completed learning the

entire piece of Seol Jang Go that summer, and since then, I practiced it and taught it to students and a

colleague friend who became an ethnomusicologist in Korean Music, the late Marnie Dilling (Professor at the

University of California, San Diego). This music was internalized and remains in me until now, and so I was later

able to write a string quartet based on Seol Jang Go.

In 2001, I wrote a piece called, Rituel for Western ensemble and a Korean drummer/ dancer featuring my

teacher, PARK, Eun-Ha. The piece was dedicated to my two friends who died around that time, one of them was

Marnie Dilling. The important concept of this piece was to keep the Korean traditional music unchanged for Ms.

PARKs part and let the other instrumentalists improvise within that framework. It was particularly interesting to

see the dialogue between Korean performer PARK and the Western percussionist, William Winant, who was an

accomplished improvisor within the Western contemporary music tradition. With the success of this performance,

it was possible to create the next projects of Rituel II and III.

At around the same time (2001) I was invited to write a work for the Hun Qio [Bridge of Souls] Project: Premiere

Concert, Remembrance and Reconciliation, featuring Yo-Yo Ma and the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota.

This project was meant to use music to heal the wounds of the Second World War in the Pacific arena.

Composers were chosen from China (Chen Yi), Japan (Michio Mamiya), Korea and the United States (Andrew

Imbrie) to represent the nations involved in that conflict. Since I was representing Korea I was asked by them to

use the Korean folk song, Arirang, for the theme of the entire piece. It was a project to find reconciliation and

peace through musiclooking back at the wounds of the mid- 20th century war era, and looking forward to a

future with a positive view toward working and living together in harmony. Music and the Arts can heal and

overcome wounds and boundaries.

The above projects reflected my personal growth and my attempts to forge an artistic voice out of the

combination of cultures that came from my personal experience. In the projects I want to describe next, I

attempted to create this synthesis on a larger scale, with more musicians from both cultures and with the idea of

creating an educational environment for students as well as for mature artists to exchange their traditions of

music and aesthetics. The fusion of cultures can be simple and superficial, but I wanted to provide a context by

which my students could go more deeply into a culture foreign to them and try to create musical works of depth

and expressiveness.

Festival for Gayageum and Western Instruments (2006-07)

The gayageum is one of Koreas oldest musical instruments. It has a technique unique to the instrument, and

produces music that is unlike any other in the world, consisting of subtle pitch bending and inflection that is not

possible on any other instrument.

I teach musical composition at UC Santa Cruz, and in 2006 I had the idea to try to engage my students in a

project of writing new compositions that combine this elegant and ancient instrument with Western instruments.

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The first problem was that they knew nothing about this instrument or about traditional Korean music in general.

While I was able to offer a seminar on Korean music, I also wanted to give my students in-depth and hands on

experience with this instrument. I organized workshops at UC Santa Cruz taught by one of Koreas best

gayageum performers and teachers, KWAK Eun-Ah (professor at Ewha Womans University). I was able to find

funding from the University of California, Santa Cruz to bring KWAK from Korea to Santa Cruz for an extended

period. Graduate students, undergraduates and faculty members participated in her workshops in order to learn

about this ancient instrument and were then invited to write new works for any combination of gayageum and

western instruments. Also participating were graduate students from UC Berkeley and UC Davis. There is a

modern version of the gayageum that has more strings, and is able to provide a complete chromatic scale that is

characteristic of Western music. Many composers have written for this instrument before, and it carries much the

same role in the ensemble as a harp would, for example. I wanted to use the same technique and language of

traditional Korean music, so for this project we only used the original instrument with 12-strings in order to

understand and carry the beauty of the traditional musical language. KWAK Eun-Ah presented 25 hours of

workshops on gayageum, bringing with her enough instruments so that each student would have a chance to

play on the instrument. Ultimately, 17 composers, including faculty and graduate students from UC Santa Cruz,

Berkeley, Davis, and two Korean composers wrote new compositions using gayageum in combinations with other

instruments.

In 2007, the Festival for Gayageum and Western Instruments was presented in Northern California and in Seoul,

Korea. Ten concerts and one seminar were presented. This was the first attempt by an institution outside Korea

to learn a Korean instrument and create contemporary pieces for it in solo or ensemble forms along with western

instruments. The project was greeted enthusiastically on both sides of the Pacific.

This was a pilot project toward the development of new cultural forms, and it was more successful than we could

have dreamed. It has not stopped since then. The participating performers and composers of this project

continue to create new works and extend their instrumentation, and concerts have been presented in Japan,

Korea and in the US annually in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Cultural Synthesis Project at the Pacific Rim Music Festival (2009-10)

As a result of the success of this project, we decided to expand upon it and include more traditional Korean

instruments in a new project that we called the "Cultural Synthesis" project. This project was inspired in part by a

unique group of traditional musicians from Seoul, the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea (CMEK, YI Jiyoung,

director). Their ability and dedication proved a key factor in the success of this project. They represent a new,

younger generation of traditional Korean musicians. While they have all achieved mastery of their traditional

Korean music, they have also been trained in Western music as well. They all read music, for example, and are

familiar with Western music theory. Several of them have written dissertations in which they have tried to

communicate their traditional music through new notated forms, in a scholarly way. In this sense they represent a

break from the older traditional musicians who studied strictly in the old oral tradition. More than anything else,

their dual training, with one foot in the traditional music world and one foot in the contemporary musical world

made this project possible. They are dedicated not just to preserving their traditional music, but also embrace the

creation of new genres in their music.

Four members of CMEK came to UC Santa Cruz for five weeks in January and February 2009 to give intensive

workshops for 75 hours: three hours a day, five days a week. Four instruments were the main focus of the

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workshopsgayageum (12 string-zither), haegeum (2 string-fiddle), daegeum (bamboo flute), and ajaeng

(bowed zither). Structured around the academic requirements of a college course, the workshops required a

dedication and time commitment that far exceeded the typical course requirement. Both students and faculty

participated in the workshops. The presence of such gifted musicians helped inspire all of them to this greater

commitment.

Daegeum virtuoso and CMEK member KIM Jeong-Seung stated about this workshop experience that "Through

participation in the Workshops at UC Santa Cruz, I was very proud as a Korean Traditional Musician and saw lots

of possibilities for new development of Korean traditional music. I really looked forward to the next step of the

collaborative project, which was the performance at the Pacific Rim Music Festival 2010."

After the workshops, twenty-five composers (twelve faculty and thirteen graduate students) from UC Santa Cruz,

Berkeley, Davis, San Diego, Columbia University and Brandeis University as well as from the Korean National

University of the Arts diligently worked on their new compositions for the instrumentation of Korean instruments

with Western instruments. We decided to focus on the Western ensemble of the String Quartet, and invited the

Del Sol Quartet from San Francisco, and the Lydian Quartet from Boston to participate in this project. We also

invited the New York New Music Ensemble, one of New York City's finest contemporary music ensembles, and

the Santa Cruz Chamber players to participate, augmenting the string quartets with wind, keyboard and

percussion instruments. Over the course of the next year composers submitted sketches of their work - in partial

or more complete forms - to the performers for feedback and criticism, and changes and improvements were

made to the compositions as a result of this feedback.

The Internet and email proved an invaluable aid in this process, and helped to overcome the geographical

distances involved. A composer in Santa Cruz could email a sketch to performers in Seoul or in Boston, and

receive comments and suggestions back within a few days. In some cases the performer could even email an

mp3 file of the composers score in performance, so the composer could hear the music and revise the work

accordingly. This proved of great value to composers who, even after the workshops on the traditional

instruments, were still relative novices in these new techniques. This collaboration created very close

communication with the composers and performers (both Korean and Western).

About this process, Laurie San-Martin, composer/ professor at the University of California, Davis where she co-

directs the Empyrean Ensemble of Contemporary Music writes: Writing for gayageum and string quartet was one

of the most rewarding projects I have undertaken as a composer. The Pacific Rim Music Festival is run with

ambition, vision and extreme diligence. The choice of musicians and composers has also been thoughtfully

selected. I found the entire experience to be professional, rewarding, and inspirational. I feel that I wrote a very

strong piece partly because of all the preparation and help that the Pacific Rim Music Festival provided including

master classes with the Korean instrumentalists, literature pamphlets and CD recordings of the instruments.

Professor San-Martin continues: The gayageum performer, Ji-young YI gave a very detailed master class at UC

Santa Cruz that was many hours long and covered the techniques and nuances of writing for the instrument.

While writing the piece over the next few months, I was able to send excerpts to Ji-young who would then send

back an mp3 of how my excerpt would sound. This is very rare---for a musician to learn the music so far in

advance and then record it and send back over email. Ji-young's efforts demonstrated to me how dedicated she

was to giving first-rate performances and how she took the project very seriously. This is one of the most

conscientious responses I have seen from a busy and professional musician. The Lydian String Quartet members

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were also very responsive and helpful giving feedback about my writing and parts well in advance of the concert.

This use of old and new technologies seemed to work well in the way that it was structured. That is, students first

met the traditional musicians face to face in the workshops. Beginners that they were, the western students were

learning the instruments with hands-on experience the way they would have a hundred years ago. They then

communicated with the musicians using the most modern technologies, email, internet, mp3 and computer

generated scores, to go deeply into the particular areas of the instrument that most interested them and that they

were embodying in their musical compositions. The impersonality of the new technology was overcome by the

initial, face-to-face meetings in the workshops. Participants met on a human level, new friendships and working

relationships were initiated, and then technology helped to continue and develop them.

The entire creative process of learning the instruments/traditions, creating new compositions and getting

feedback from the performers, took us about two years. The results of this effort were extremely rewarding! They

were finally showcased by premiere performances at the Pacific Rim Music Festival.

I founded and have been Artistic Director of the Pacific Rim Music Festival at the University of California since

1996. The fourth presentation of the Pacific Rim Music Festival at Santa Cruz and at Brandeis University in April

2010 was the perfect opportunity to present the results of this Cultural Synthesis project. A series of concerts

called the Premiere Concerts presented twenty-five world premiere performances of new music written for

combinations of Western instruments and the traditional players of CMEK. Three programs were presented.

Twenty-five composerstwelve distinguished faculty composers and thirteen graduate student composers

representing five generations and from ten different nationalities participated. Thirty-two top caliber performers --

Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea (ten members), the Del Sol String Quartet from San Francisco, Lydian

String Quartet from Boston, Santa Cruz Chamber Ensemble from Santa Cruz, and the New York New Music

Ensemble performed. Five musicologists participated in seminars and colloquia presented at UC Santa Cruz. A

total of sixty-two artists participated.

Judith Eissenberg of the Lydian String Quartet commented after the performances that

The experience of working on the newly composed pieces was truly memorable. It was interesting to hear how

each composer dealt with the problem of writing for musicians of such different traditions. We have composers

to thank for being the fearless mediators, imagining new languages, finding common ground, and valuing our

differences. The act of creation is such a powerful unifying force; we all felt that as we worked together. It is a

lesson for the world, and artists can help light the path.

The audience reaction was strongly felt. Both in Santa Cruz and at Brandeis, students, faculty, community

members, composers, performers - all were drawn in to the gorgeous soundscapes and stunning musical ideas.

Haegeum virtuoso, CHUNG Soo-Neon, professor at Korean National University of the Arts stated that A New

Sound Era for the 21st Century opened through the Pacific Rim Music Festival: I am certain that a new musical

genre for Korean Traditional Instruments, as well as a curtain rising on a new stage for Western Music were

enabled through this Premiere Concert project.

The achievement of this project could not have occurred without significant financial support. We received

support from and are grateful to the University of California, the Korea Foundation, and to numerous individual

donors who made this project possible.

A comment by Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz, David Evan Jones: "I was impressed with the standing

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traditional ensembles supported by the Korean government and cultural institutions. I believe that this effort to

preserve tradition frees the contemporary imagination: if you know your cultural foundations are safe you are free

to experiment!"

This project tried to represent the positive side of this process of moving from the personal to the collaborative.

Most of us deal with the issues of cultural identity on our own, on a personal basis, with whatever resources we

may be able to gather on our own. Moving this project to an institutional level enabled us to challenge these

problems together, and to provide support to each other as we struggled with them. I hope it gave the individuals

involved another level of resource by which they could deal with these issues, but it could not have been

achieved without significant support from those educational and government resources.

The renewed interest in traditional music of all the world cultures has been an encouraging development of the

last few decades. The personal experiences and projects I have described have all been directly influenced by

the search for tradition in modern life. The Cultural Synthesis project shows how traditional and modern music

can be combined within an educational structure at a school. There are also other implications that this topic

raises.

Within the field of music, there are several conflicting opinions expressed as to just how traditional music should

be treated and preserved. At the Festival, one of the topics discussed was Pansori. Pansori is a beloved vocal

form among the Korean people. A single singer, accompanied by a single drummer, presents a dramatic narrative

story that is sung and spoken over several hours, in a uniquely Korean vocal style. It has been recognized as an

important vocal form by being named a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The question arose, how should this traditional form be treated in the 21st century? I can illustrate using three

differing treatments of the form.

1) At one of the colloquia, the musicologist John Robison presented a paper on the use of Pansori in the work of

the contemporary Korean composer LEE Chan-Hae. LEE Chan-Hae has said, I think Pansori is like a mono-

drama, opera. It is the sound of the common people. I wanted to make it like an opera, and wanted to perform it

with Western ensemble, so it could be appreciated by a global audience. We can share this Pansori with many

people in the world, and not just have it regarded as an ethnic music

She has been trying to compose the five Pansori pieces using different Western Ensembles, with the

accompaniment in a modern contemporary musical language. The Pansori singing melody is the same as the

original form, but the role of the Drum (Buk) accompaniment is replaced by an ensemble accompaniment of

Western and Korean instruments. This is an attempt to make Pansori accessible to non-Koreans and to combine

Pansori with Western ensembles.

2) A different point of view is expressed by those who think traditional music should be left untouched and

preserved in its old forms. The German journalist and music critic Mattiass Entress of Berlin has been

enthusiastically promoting Pansori and has translated the texts into German and is in the process of English

translations. He thinks the original form of Pansori must be preserved without any change:

Also, I don't like any add-ons in Pansori-Performance. Only a drummer and the singer. I don't like this western-

opera-version Changgeuk of Pansori and I don't like to have melody instruments as accompaniment to the

singing.

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Pansori must not be improved. The beauty inside is destroyed if some superficial beauty is added to the

performance. Pansori is the art of inflaming the listener's imagination, it is the art of communication, it is not an

opulent operatic form which overwhelms ears and eyes. Of course I will never allow to amplify the singer. It must

be direct contact. In western theatres the acoustical situation allows this, and in Korea it also would, if one would

turn down the air conditioners

3) Korean-American Pansori singer, Chan-Eung PARK tries to make Pansori understandable to non-Koreans by

singing in English for the Aniri (narrative portion of Pansori) while singing the Sori in the original form in Korean.

Many Westerners appreciate her efforts to make this Korean form accessible to non-Korean speakers.

Related to this idea is a newly created Pansori, Jesu-Jeon (The Story of the Life of Jesus Christ): It was created

in the 1970s by the late Pansori Master, PARK Dong-Jin. The idea came from the late Rev. KIM, Yong-Jun who

was the director general of the Korean Audio-Visual Christian Organization (later combined with the CBS,

Christian Broadcasting Services). He thought that the traditional music should be brought into the Church music

in Korea. This has inspired many musicians and many are trying to use traditional idioms for the church music in

modern society.

To summarize these three approaches: 1) we should merge the tradition with modern genres to create something

new; 2) we should preserve the tradition as it exists without changes; 3) we should modify the tradition in simple

ways that dont alter its essence in order to communicate the tradition with audiences from other cultures. These

examples raise issues that I am sure are being discussed at this conference, as well as by all interested in

traditional music. I think that all three of the above approaches have merit. Perhaps the key factor for us is--what

is the intent of the music? Music is written for many reasons, and those reasons influence the form and character

of the music. Music written for dance will be different than music written for religious service, or music written for

a funeral, or music written for film or theater. For many of us the music we value most has the intention to

communicate meaning--specifically, to communicate what it means to be alive today. Music has the ability to

communicate things about ourselves and our lives that can not be communicated with language. Traditional

music has depth and power because it is the product not of just one person's efforts, but is the product of

countless generations building one upon the next, keeping what they treasure and leaving behind what they find

insignificant. The attempt to convey what it means to be alive today entails the understanding of what it means to

be alive today, and that understanding requires constant study, an inquisitiveness and openness to everything in

the world around us. The first step must be to provide for the preservation of the past. Tradition must be

preserved. With traditional practices reasonably secure, the second step must be to provide a basis for

dialog between the past and the present. While a dialog of words can play an important role in this process, a

dialog of artistic practices cross-cultural collaborations can be even more important. If the tradition is being

preserved, new forms created through this dialogue will also be preserved by future generations if they feel an

important communication of meaning, or they will be discarded if they are felt to be of insignificant meaning.

Again, the essential requirements for this project were these:

1) You must have artists who are committed to the communication between cultures and are willing to experiment

and search for new musical genres and languages; As professor David Evan Jones stated, "The members of

Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea are SO valuable because they are the bridges: their traditional music is

alive not only because they perform it, but also because they bring their experience into dialog with contemporary

European and Korean music. They are the bridges that allow transit between cultures and even between

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centuries: they allow the past and the future to support and sustain each other.

2) There must be a core group of committed planners who are willing to schedule events, make appropriate

contacts and organize the artists, and take care of those physical elements that must be in place for the

collaborations to take place;

3) There must be cultural support from the institutions of the society, the schools, foundations, businesses and

governments, who are who are committed to this cultural interaction and openness. This philosophy of openness

is no small matter. We believe that a society will thrive and flourish best when it opens itself up to other ideas,

and promotes the free exchange of information to all its members. Like a mountain lake, if there is a constant

cycling of the water from sky to earth, rivers flowing out and rain falling in, the water will remain pure and healthy.

If the lake is cut off and the cycling of water blocked, the lake becomes stagnant, the water undrinkable.

Individuals and societies need the free flowing of ideas to stay healthy and growing.

My position at the University of California was an important part of this process.

I tried to create a framework within an educational institution by which the merging of different musical cultures

can occur in more than a superficial way. It required study and effort, and above all respect for each other's

traditions and aesthetic views.

These ideas, the results of our cultural synthesis project, were perhaps best exemplified by the works presented

by one of the senior members of our project, the eminent Chinese-American composer/ scholar Chou Wen-chung,

Professor emeritus from Columbia University in New York. He came to America as a young man, studied music

composition in New York as the French-American composer Edgar Varse's last student, and has been a strong

advocate for these ideas of cultural heritage and cultural interaction since before many of us here today were

born.

Professor Chou wrote three pieces for the Festival that are different, but related to each other:

1. Korean Ensemble piece, Eternal Pine (2008) for piri, daegeum, saeng hwang, gayageum, janggo, Written

for the Contemporary Music Ensemble Korea. Dedicated to Korean scholar, the Late LEE Hye-Ku on the

occasion of his 100th Birthday.

2. Western Ensemble piece, Ode to Eternal Pine (2009) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion:

Written for New York New Music Ensemble. Dedicated to American composer, Elliot Carter on the occasion of his

100th Birthday.

3. Solo piece, CHANG SONG EUM (2009) for gaygeum (and janggo). Written for YI Jiyoung. Dedicated to

Korean composer, the late LEE Sung-Jae on his 85th Birthday.

Upon first listening to these three pieces we hear that they are very different, and their relationship is not easily

understood. But they are very closely related.

Before I discuss composer Chou Wen-chungs own views of these pieces, I would like to share some comments

from the composer, LEE Geonyong, professor at Korean National University of the Arts:

I felt the three versions of the Eternal Pine were all different piecesfor Korean Ensemble, New York Ensemble

and the solo gayageum version. However, the composer says they are three different versions of one piece.

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Mr. Chou often mentions heritage of the East and the West. What is the heritage of the East? Connected to this

example, I think it meant the mind is more important than the material. I think the people in the West consider

the material more important, so the appearance gets more emphasis. But wisdom in the East teaches us to

understand the Mind beyond the Material.

Talking about the Eternal Pine: If we think about the material, they are clearly different pieces. Beyond that

material element, if we can read the mind, the three pieces are the same piece. Mind that can see is the

wisdom and the valuable heritage of the East. That was my understanding.

And Professor Chou explained:

"Eternal Pine" for a Jeong ak ensemble is composed out of admiration for the heritage of the Korean Jeong ak

(chamber music): spirituality in character and affinity to nature. It is composed with knowledge of Jeong ak

practice and dedicated to its esthetics. The goal is to make a great

cultural achievement of the past vibrant again with its own language but with modern sensibility.

It is an example of what is needed today. We must revivify cultural achievements around the world to enable a

cross fertilization of cultures for the future of all humanity. To do so, we must stress education in humanities,

particularly the arts.

We must stop emulating recent arts of the west at the expense of revitalizing past heritages of other regions. Nor

should we continue exploiting what are labeled "exotic," "popular," or "ethnic."

We must educate the young about our past in order to create an art of the future for the whole world, the

foundation of which rests on all great heritages of the past. We must initiate a new holistic education in culture to

inspire future generations.

"Ode to Eternal Pine" for modern instruments is composed out of a desire to make "Eternal Pine" more

accessible across cultures today. It illustrates the potential of synthesizing the past with the present. "Eternal Pine

for gayageum solo, CHANG SONG EUM" is still another version for the artist to demonstrate all the subtleties of

this instrument's beauty, so as to tantalize the public's inert musical sensibility.

"This experience confirms my own belief that the only way towards a 'merger' of musical heritages that Ive long

advocated is in the education of composers and performers. I envision the future of music not by seizing it but

molding it.

Humanities studies should be the foundation for the education of the 21st century composer."

This idea needs to be stated firmly. It is these aspects of educating the young in order to create an art of the

future that inspired the theme of the Pacific Rim Music Festival: "Music from the Past, Music for the Future."

Through study, through workshops, through communication of ideas, utilizing the oldest musical traditions and

the newest technologies, along with the cultural sensibilities of all the various people involved, we can create the

music of the 21st century that thrives in its tradition and excites in its innovation.

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41

How to Inquire When the Eye Jumps Over the Wall : An overview of the current state of knowledge on research capacities in arts education

Ramn Cabrera Salort

Universidad de las Artes de Cuba, Cuba

casalort@cubarte.cult.cu

From an epistemological point of view, as Jorge Gonzlez says, reality is not structured, but prone to being

structuralized; is not arranged, but prone to be arranged. After that he states that reality can be structuralized, but

it is structuralizing. Therefore knowledge depends on the structure of the person who knows. 1 Inquiring the

current state of knowledge on research capacities in arts education and the way they manifest in the daily

education practice implies revealing a network of relationships. From such a source relations between educators

and educated there spring the contexts of interaction, which constitute the reality of the educational practice.

What reality does the present Latin-American art educator start from, the context I know best, the ambience of

arts and education? And in what way is the resulting investigation determined?

The research capacities of arts education teachers and professors are first conditioned by their background

in the arts and their degree of upgrading and their level of comprehension of the symbol process of their

contemporaneousness. The educator is then challenged to submit to a permanent education --the educator

must be educated-- but it remains as challenge, rather than the practice and their outcomes. Generally,

educators, in their formation and habits, run aground in the art canons they reach but do not surpass what

the historic vanguards, the isms from the early last century Europe, later embodied in our America, and

attached to the movements of social-political renewal: the Mexican revolution, university reforms, the rise of

left political parties, etc. have offered. As a result of which, and in the best of the cases, art happens to be

seen basically as an instrument of expression reflecting their epochal conditions or circumstances.

Among the isms there are the ones that join the tendency of figurative representation, also, the

representative tendencies linked to the many abstract realizations, whether geometric or not; and in smaller

proportions such tendencies as the one referring to Dadaistic operations later evolving into diverse

aspects of arts ranking from pop art and conceptualisms to the fields of performance and the ephemeral

where the dimension ecological, ethnographic or any other become a tool for the realization.

From the exposed ideas about art educators assimilate as patterns, there derives a conviction about reality

and the real, where the real and reality is external to and independent from the subjects, and where

objectivity and the objective stand as opposite and exempted from the eyes and the polluting presence of

the subjective.

The above supposition lays the foundations of the traditional criterion of the so-called scientific method of

investigation; as a result of which the deductive hypothetical and experimentation, together with the relieve

figures and statistical resources are the objectivity providers prove the required paradigm for any that

investigation attempt.

1 CF. Gonzlez, Jorge (Coord.) (2007): Cibercultur@ e iniciacin en la investigacin. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mxico D.F.

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On the other hand, and based on the false belief that there are no proper and significant experiences,

educators, lack of the adequate knowledge of past valuable experiences by other educators both domestic

and foreign.

As a consequence of the above expressed, there is the fact that in order to know the development of the

research capacities in arts education it is central to analyze what models of arts are the ones that prevail in

school and what types of behaviour they are associated with, as well as the reasons why the historical inquiries

are hardly carried out. At the beginning of the 1990s the arts theoretician Juan Acha had stated that in Latin

America there prevailed certain fallacies about arts2, that were predominant in the discourse of the media and the

culture industry, and that turned out to be axioms. This does not mean, however, any a priori judgement about the

cultural reality created by them.

Such fallacies were based on taking arts as beauty, as photographic realism, as a feeling or expressivity, as

entertainment, as religious magic. Along with them there results the idea of the goals that drive the artists, and, to

some extent, their qualities they should own or be gifted. Such fallacies provide guidelines for the practice of art

education. They become axioms which are not submitted to any questioning at all, and make the necessity of

investigation superfluous.

And, consequently, such fallacies stand as reasons for taking the need of investigation as superfluous. Art seen

as beauty is, generally, associated with/to a western and classic aesthetic canon. Its teaching, therefore, sticks to

a cultural model definitively superseded in our contemporary symbolic practice. Faced as a photographic reality,

art leads to a reflexive conception, that of art as a mirror of realities rather than as another reality. Instead of

conceiving that in the discourse of art there is something built, which turns out to be its reality and which does

not lead to an external reality as such serving as a model, but the artistic product itself contains a new reality,

which Wolfang Iser called the indeterminacy of fictional texts, since they prove the objects themselves and do not

copy something that already exists.

Assumed as a feeling or expressivity, art, in its discourse, only favors the affective function at the expense of

deteriorating other functions, which are present in the artistic production. Likewise, in taking art as reduced to the

pleasure of entertainment or to its bonds with religious themes and with the primitive ideologeme of magic

virtues makes art in the education practice lose all its critical and cultural values.

So far, this all would seem too generic, if I did not relate it to the concrete facts in the socially-sanctioned field

investigations. When I say socially-sanctioned field, I mean the set of prevailing ideas about what investigation

and scientific are and how to investigate; is expressed by the term doxa, a megasystem of information coined by

the institutions specialized in permanently metabolizing and elaborating the social discourse of science and its

propagation in the whole social body. Hence, the prevailing preconceptions for regulating perception, cognition,

action and evaluation, which happen to be sanctioned by the scientific discourse.

I start from the premise of my personal experience as a tutor, an opponent and a jury for Bachelor degrees,

Master degrees and Ph degrees in Art Education at Cuban and Latin American universities, where the above

mentioned doxa is common and current evidence and where its critique should lead to new investigation

2 Cf. Acha, Juan (1992): Introduccin a la creatividad artstica. Editorial Trillas, Mxico D.F.

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epistemes.

One of the inconsistencies I have always faced is the prevailing conception of Literature as preceptive, normative,

standardizing, historizing rather than as the heuristic practice of speech and language. As a rule, and in spite of

the fact of its nature of dealing with the art of words, Literature has never been considered as a syllabus in Arts

Education in any of the school curricula. And such a fact determines that when investigating about this subject, it

is procrastinated.

On the other hand, facing Literature as art not only implies emphasizing its condition but also empowering its role

in the being of the students. And such was the major focus of a Master degree paper about Literature from a

personological standpoint by a professor of the subject. 3 The very nature of the artistic being of the literary led

the researching professor to acknowledge and check that it could be attainable only by means of a teaching-

learning process which would cultivate and prioritize the aesthetic and artistic comprehension of the written

language. From this starting point, I later approached the emphasis on the literary uses of literature by the

students themselves, the latter being the literary creators and the on-stage re-creators. 4 Both investigations

brought forth very significant and conclusive results. Diana explicates the strengths of her proposal in such terms

that may be extended to other areas and disciplines of arts educations. She states, the proposal procures a

conception of literature as an artistic-expressive fact, born by humans need to become further. Therefore, the

apprentice at present should start their own ontological journey. The present proposal aims at motivating the

learner to feel literature as part of themselves and their culture so they could be their expressive device.

The traditional methods consider the teacher and the text/context as information, and, within the classroom, the

only communicators and producers of concrete data. The present proposal is relevant since it suggests the

student should also be an emitter of opinions, of analyses, and of texts, so as to acquire a personal and unique

comprehension by means of a personally relevant learning. Exercising such significant learning, the student will

develop their active role instead of holding on a passive position, not committing themselves emotionally and

intellectually. This proposal aims at transforming the traditional mechanics of a classroom by means of students