January 2010 Archives
Arts Patronage: So Simple, Even a Child Can Do It
Hi everyone,
First, I want to thank those of you who became early supporters of my project, LOVETOWN PA, on Kickstarter. I am encouraged by what has been pledged so far and by the fact that people other than myself are excited about this project and want to see it happen. Thank you. We have a long way to go to reach our goal before the deadline, so if you know of anyone who might be interested in becoming a backer, please send them the link to the kickstarter page.
I want to remind everyone else that there is still plenty of time to back the project. And yes, my six-year-old nephew and my eleven-year-old niece have both made pledges. It just goes to show how easy and fun it is to become an arts patron. Put it on your resume. Bring it up in conversation at a dinner party. Say it to yourself as you drift off to sleep. "I'm an arts patron." Sounds nice, right? I know this has been a tough year for most of us, and I know there are needs in this world much more pressing than my little jaunt through Philadelphia. So I would never try to convince anyone what they should do with their money. I'm simply presenting you with an opportunity to be a part of something that I think is kind of exciting. So if you are able, and if you would like to, would you consider helping to make this project happen? Please follow this link to learn how.
Thank you
Gene Schmidt
"The artist is a bridge between despair and hope." Jon Foreman on Huffington Post
The artist is a bridge between despair and hope. The artist, more than anyone else is responsible for the re-creation, re-definition and re-thinking the world around us. Every poem, every song, every painting has tremendous possibility. Each of these creations could be a letter of resignation to The World That Is or a window into The World That Is Not. Each poem/painting/song could be a vehicle to a new reality, one in which the artist plays a part no matter how small. The artist paints a world into existence. The canvas, the paint, the brush--these known quantities of existence and reality are tools for stepping into the unknown. The notes of the song are a bridge from what is to what is not yet.Click here to read the rest of this excellent article.
Charis Exhibit in Hong Kong Extended to Feb. 20
Makoto FUJIMURA: Charis, extended to 20 February 2010
Gallery EXIT, G/F, 1 Shin Hing Street, Central, Hong Kong
Mon - Sat, 1100 - 1900
Charis, the first solo exhibition of Makoto Fujimura in Hong Kong, will be extended to 20 February 2010. A few new works will be on view from 25 January onwards.
IAM Releases “InsideOut,” a Collection of Poetry by L.L. Barkat
NEW YORK, NY (January 15, 2010) – International Arts Movement’s mission to “inspire, engage and create” is realized in a new collection of poetry. InsideOut, by L.L. Barkat, was published last month by the non-profit arts organization. Pre-release copies were available prior to Christmas, but the book’s official release will take place at IAM’s Space 38|39 in midtown Manhattan on January 29. Barkat, whose previous work includes the memoir Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places (InterVarsity Press, 2008), will read from her collection, and singer/songwriter Brooke Campbell will also perform.
In reviews of her first book, Stone Crossings, L.L. Barkat’s writing has been compared to Annie Dillard and Eugene Peterson. Byron Borger, owner of Hearts and Minds Books and frequent book reviewer, calls Stone Crossings, “one of the best books I've read in a while,” and Steve Hayner, President of Columbia Theological Seminary, calls Barkat’s writing “beautiful and intelligent.” Moving from memoir to poetry, Barkat maintains her unique voice, sensitive to the dignity in everyday encounters.
A prolific blogger, Barkat contributes to Seedlings in Stone, Tweetspeak Poetry, and High Callings Blogs, where she is also a Managing Editor. Barkat is also a staff writer for The Curator Magazine, and in February, she will speak on “The Poet as Minor Pastor” at the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh.
“An Evening of Poetry and Music,” featuring L.L. Barkat and Brooke Campbell, will take place at 7:00 PM on Friday, January 29, at IAM’s Space 38|39, located at 38 W. 39th Street, 3rd Floor, in Manhattan. For those who are not in NYC, the event will be streamed live at www.InternationalArtsMovement.org as part of IAM Live, an online resource from the movement. For more information, please visit the web site. InsideOut will be available for purchase at the event, and the poet will sign copies of her books that night.
InsideOut, poems by L.L. Barkat, may be purchased online from Amazon, both in print and for Kindle. More information on the book, author and publisher is at www.internationalartsmovement.org/insideout.
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Source: International Arts Movement
Contact: Christy Tennant
Revisiting the One-Size-Fits-All-Education-System at Encounter 10
I bought a sweater once that was "one-size-fits-all," but I quickly discovered that "one-size-fits-all" is a bold-faced lie. When it comes to clothing, one size most definitely does not fit all. I am a size four, and the sweater practically swallowed me whole. It was supposed to be one of those items that stretched and retracted to accommodate its wearer, but instead it was bunchy and bulky and unflattering. It quickly moved to the back of my closet, only to be donated to Goodwill for some other gullible shopper to get suckered into buying.
One-size-fits-all is a lie when it comes to clothing. And, I am coming to learn, it is a lie in pretty much everything else. When the IAM staff first got our iPhones, mine felt clunky and large in my smallish hands, while my coworkers who are men with much larger hands did not find it awkward at all. When I go somewhere, I slide easily into my Nissan Sentra, but when I recently gave my friend Allen a ride, his height and girth made my small car a bit of a challenge. For him, a truck or larger sedan would fit much better. The more I think about it, one size does not really "fit" all. Rather, "all" adjust or accommodate or simply get used to using something that doesn't fit all that well. The more I think about it, life depends on "all" adjusting to the "one-size." I suppose, in some backward way, that is how manufacturers can get away with saying that "one size fits all."
I subscribe to Books and Culture, the bi-monthly book review publication, but because of the profusion of reading material that fills my days (not to mention my desk, bedside table, coffee table, and dining table), each issue usually gets shuffled around from living room to bathroom to briefcase to Staten Island Ferry, and back again before I finally get to read it. That's why it took me until January 13 to read Rebecca Ward Lindsay's very helpful review in the November/December issue.
In "School Daze," Lindsay touches on three books that address the broken educational system in America. She rightly points out that, "No country can boast as many spectacular universities as the United States. And yet, our primary and secondary schools lag behind dozens of other nations." The three authors mentioned in this piece have differing opinions on the cause of our educational woes, and they each offer contrasting solutions to the troubles facing children in the public school systems as they are presently operating. Yet all seem to be unified on one thing: the system is in need of repair.
At International Arts Movement, we are not only interested in addressing issues facing artists and creative catalysts. Our interest as a movement is in the broken systems in all spheres of culture. And one system that is undeniably broken is our education system, from the current proliferation of standardized testing that has alienated and marginalized not only many students, but also teachers, to an imbalanced emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving divorced from the creative arts. As the daughter of a retired public school music teacher, I witnessed the evolution that seemed to begin in the late '90's and early '00's, when Standards of Learning (SOL's) became the obsession of the public school system. Teachers, who had cultivated their programs through spending years in the classroom, had to suddenly become like drill sergeants, hammering information potentially covered by SOL test questions into their students so that they could keep their jobs and their students could be promoted to the next level.
As I was reflecting on this today, I called my mom, who is now retired from teaching but serves as a substitute teacher in the system in which she taught for years. In fact, she happened to be subbing today, and she called me back during her short lunch break. After we discussed her experiences as a public school teacher, she said, "There are cycles in education," she said. "What they're doing now is not what they will be doing later. We (teachers) just have to wait and adapt to those changes."
I remembered hearing about changes that my mom's programs experienced as the pressure mounted to pass SOL tests each spring. Mom used to produce school musicals that gave all of the children in a given grade level a chance to learn about performing, stage craft, dance, story-telling and other cultures. Occasionally, during the weeks of rehearsal, she would pull soloists or groups of dancers out of class for additional rehearsals. The teachers were very supportive and accommodating of this. However, as SOL pressure grew, the teachers no longer allowed students out of class for those short rehearsals. Instead, Mom was expected to mount school musicals with only two 30-minute rehearsals during her classes each week.
As a result, Mom had to "dumb down" her programs. Whereas in the past, she would invite a professional Spanish dancer to come in and teach one group of gifted movers some more challenging choreography, she could no longer do that with the limited time she had. She had to use simpler music, simpler movement and simplified dialogue. However, Mom pointed out optimistically that "a creative person can find ways to both accommodate the SOL requirements and keep it engaging for the kids." In fact, she adapted a musical for her school that incorporated lessons in Virginia history, which were part of the SOL prep, and the musical was so popular with the kids and effective as a teaching tool that other schools in her system requested the materials for their schools too, proving that, once again, necessity is a wonderful creative catalyst. She also used "Schoolhouse Rock" material liberally throughout the year, which "the kids loved."
In his excellent TED lecture, delivered in February 2006, creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson bluntly proposes that education, as we currently approach it, kills creativity. Challenging the way we're educating our children, Sir Ken champions "a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence."
The "one-size-fits-all" educational system that presently marks our nation simply doesn't work for everyone. But, as with every other broken system, most people adjust. (I almost said "simply adjust," but the adjustment is far from simple. Rather, the adjustment often requires a team of paraprofessionals, administrators, counselors, advocates and teachers working together to help certain students fit in to the one-size-fits-all system in whose margins they spend a third of their days.)
One of the questions that will be addressed at IAM's upcoming Encounter 10 will deal with this issue of how the one-size-fits-all education system is broken. We want to push people to wrestle deeply with the questions surrounding this issue and to cultivate creative, alternative approaches to a system that leaves so many floundering on the sidelines. While the actual question is still evolving a bit, we plan to ask something to the effect of, "Are we teaching art - and everything else - all wrong?"
Meanwhile, we would love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with Sir Ken Robinson's assessment:
What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. Now, I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. If you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this. He said that all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it. So why is this?Are you an educator or parent who would like to connect with others who are displeased with the one-size-fits-all system currently being proliferated by our schools? Do you want to participate in this discussion?
Please send me your thoughts at christy (at) internationalartsmovement.org, and please consider joining us for Encounter 10, March 4-6 in lower Manhattan. Details can be found at www.IAMencounter.com.
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IAM Global Blog
The IAM Global blog discusses news and updates for the entire International Arts Movement.