Why are the Arts important for your child? Artistic vs Creative

I was reading a research article recently about the new “creative class” in America. This is a new economic segment of society (paralleled in Australia) which has arisen out of the changes in workforce trends, technology, a strengthened upper class, and an economically weakened middle class. The creative class is the new group of economically advantaged workers who are benefitting from their engagement in knowledge-centred and creative pursuits. They are flexible in their approach to work, and dynamic in their “new ideas” output. It is this group in society who are pushing the trends in design, not just product manufacture, and are becoming the newly economically advantaged.

I am sure you have heard of the new educational paradigm, pushing the concept of creativity, and collaboration in classrooms. I had the wonderful experience just last week of sharing the new recording studio technologies with year 6 students in their space. It was incredible the way these kids were eager to absorb everything I could share with them, and then independently take it to the next level. The student’s own ideas of what they could do with the product were quite astounding.

So we have hit creative, but how is artistic different to this?

As a Performing Arts person, the “arts” side of an experience, or project, is the starting point of truth – we call it the artistic intention. It is the “why” we do it in the first place. In the Arts we explore the concepts of context, artistic narrative, sub-text, philosophy; our personal or group reasoning for being creative in the first place. I love where education is going at the moment. I love that we figured out that integrating learnings into projects contextualises experience. Even more, the fact we inserted A into STEM and made STEAM. It probably should be ASTEM – the Artistic intention being the starting point, but it’s a terrible acronym so wouldn’t sell...

For students; having a deep purpose of “why” they do things before embarking upon them, can create end results with a clear, really fulfilling purpose. This is exactly what we do everyday in Music, Drama, Dance, Film & TV, and Visual Art classes.

Jeremy Williamson
Director of Performing Arts K-12