Found on the National Art Education Association’s web site are E. Eisner’s 10 Lessons the Arts Teach Children. Now that we are back in school I thought it would be a good idea to revisit them. What do you think?

“1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.”

To read the rest of these click on the link below

10-lessons-the-arts-teach

For years the Torrance Creativity tasks have been used as the standard for creativity assessment. In May Kyung Hee Kim, from William & Mary, found that creativity scores continually rose as did IQ scores until 1990. In the following years there has been a continuous decline in creativity scores. What is disturbing is the decrease is significant in the younger children in America. Children in kindergarten through sixth grade show the decline to be “most serious.”  What can we do?

Follow the below link to read this interesting article written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman for Newsweek.

The Creative Crisis

DoSomething.org knows you care about arts education and wants you to participate in their new initiative Make Art Save Art.

The program wants to use artists and students to spread the message  that arts are important to American schools. Read more on the contest that corporate sponsors HP and AMD are participating in.

Make Art Save Art

Visit  MakeArtSaveArt.org to get  details on how you can participate in the contest:

dosomething.org

The Neighborhood Big Draw takes place Saturday October 9th. This fun event is a wonderful activity to get neighbors together-drawing (a great way to get children interested in art),  promote community and learn more about where you live. Go to the below link to get the details and get started in organizing your “big draw”.

http://Neighborhood Big Draw

Also, available at the site is an eBook that helps you plan and organize your own event.

The largest Arts program in the southeast, Young Audiences, Woodruff Art Center (YAWAC) is part of a national 31 – chapter Young Artists program in Atlanta.  Started in 1983 with nine artists it now has grown to 64 artists. YAWAC is involved in the lives and learning of children and teens in multiple ways. The artists run a variety of learning programs such as smART stART and Arts for Learning Lessons targeting specific learning skills of children from kindergarten and up. It is best known for its programs in which the artists from the Young Audiences put on shows for children. With over 60 different programs the artists’ can present a variety of art forms to the students and provide an education in various cultures here and abroad.

Read more about this interesting program by Martha Barksdale

Young Audiences

The Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum believes  art plays an important part in a child’s develpment. In a June 2005 Harris Poll, “93 percent of Americans think that the arts are vital to providing a well-rounded education.”  Additional research supports that getting an early start in the arts can make a real difference in the lives of children.  Art education not only plays an important part in a child’s creative development but can play a major role in a child’s academic and social development.

Read more from Katy Matthai’s column in the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune.

Arts can play a roll in a child’s development

Beginning  next week, the White House will be will be hosting events celebrating the arts, innovation and creativity. In conjunction with this they will be promoting the importance of arts for students and the community.

On Monday, July 19th, the President and First Lady will begin the weeklong celebration with a music series honoring the arts and demonstrating the importance of arts education. Later in the week First Lady Obama will be hosting a luncheon to honor Recipients of the National Design Awards which are handed out to artists in various disciplines from architecture to product design.  

To read more about this celebration follow this link:

White House Celebrates the Arts

Technology is constantly reshaping the way we interact with each other and the way we learn. The Never-Ending Drawing Machine is proof in point.

Developed by MIT’s Media Lab, this collaborative art tool allows for real-time content sharing between users and enables digital artworks to be co-created. Although still in its prototype phase, these types of creative technologies may give us a glimpse into the future of education.

To learn more about this incredible technology, click here.

Artists of all skill levels have been congregating at the Women Centered Art Co-op in Charlotte, North Carolina since it opened earlier this year in March. The center, founded by two artists, focuses its programs on the experience of creating art rather than the finished product itself. Members can participate in painting, sculpture, photography, film, music, yoga classes, and more.

Said member Jessica Copeland, “We all have regular jobs. Sometimes we lose that ability to be creative. This offers you an opportunity to find that piece of you again.”

To learn more about this growing program, read the full story written by Karen Sullivan for the Charlotte Observer:

Nurturing the art of creativity

What are you doing this summer? In Anne Arundel County, Maryland teachers will be learning art, songwriting, mime and dance  in efforts to better teach students in math, science and other subjects in the fall.

These teachers will be attending a summer development program that allows county elementary and middle school teachers to take art lessons and create ways to integrate the disciplines learned into all subjects.

To read more about this creative program, click on the link to  the article written by Joe Burris for the Baltimore Sun :

Intergrating Art into Other Subjects