Journal Entry 6, LCE Summer Forum: Know what you do and why you do it

Journal Entry 6, LCE Summer Forum: Know what you do and why you do it

The Lincoln Center Education (formerly Lincoln Institution) is considered to be the home of teaching artistry, its where the notion came to being and its where thinkers, practitioners, and teaching artists come together to further develop and advance the field. Something we spent a lot of time exploring what the primary purpose is of what it is we do and why. The LCE has been developing a kind of structure called The Purpose Threads focused on sharpening the effectiveness of practice and clarifying the goals of projects and work teaching artists do.

The labs and forums started in 2014, with purpose to support the development and understanding of Teaching Artistry with experts such as Eric Booth at the helm. Some of the purpose threads are better developed and understood than other, and is in the process of forming, having them is very useful and prompts valuable questions regarding What is the purpose of your teaching artistry work? as well as allows for guidelines for assessment and evaluation of the work which we do in order to do it better.

The Seven (plus one) Purpose Threads

Name of Thread | Primary purpose of the work

Work of art: To enhance the encounter with art works.

To introduce, excite, interest people in their art offerings. TAs often have participants create works of art as a tool in this process, and seeing works of art is common too, and what unifies all the practices is that they seek to deepen personal connections with works of art. If you were to assess the TAs work in this thread, you would seek to assess the quality of engagement with the art.

Art skills development. | To deepen the development of art-making skills.

Going beyond the technical, mechanical and copycat learning, teaching artistry aspires to produce artistically alive people. Teahing artists teach the skill of their discipline, but the add something more than the tools of the art form- they teach artistry in the art form and beyond. If you were to assess the TAs work in this thread, you would seek to assess the learner’s motivation, students ownership of the skill, the development of the individual’s voice, the strength of the connections the learner has made inside and outside of the art form.

Arts integration. | To catalyze the learning of non-arts content.

Usually the TA is the lead in this partnership, and must show discipline to ensure the balance, amid a school setting that cares much less about the arts and with partners who usually back away from the arts component. There are hundreds of programs and experiments of this kind across the United States, and go by many names including STEM to STEAM, arts project based learning, arts-rich and arts-infused curriculum. If you were to assess the TAs work in this thread, you would seek to assess the learning in both the art and the other subject area. For example in a theatre and history project, you might assess what students have learned about writing effective scenes, as well as their grasp of the historical material they were dramatizing.

Community life. | To enhance the life of communities.

Teaching Artists seek to activate and enhance the artistic assets within a community in order to enrich its quality of life. This has been the domain of “community artists”, a deep and proud tradition, vibrant around the world, in which artist serve community needs. Project’s art is dedicated to a broad inclusion of participants. If you were to assess the TA’s work in this thread, you would seek to assess the impact on community members, how their attitudes and perhaps their behaviors have changed.

***I find this definition and assessment criteria for this somewhat problematic as is with the definition below for activism and social/personal development. I think that reasons for this would be a whole other blog post.

Activism. | To impact a political or social movement.

This thread is connected to the community life thread, and has a long public history, sometimes including artworks labeled “propaganda”, and often intentds to be controversial or provocative. Artists use their skills to work on causes they care about by making work they care about, through creating works that carry their messages. If you were to assess the artist-activist’s work in this thread, you would try to determine impact, and the lingering effects in people’s harts and minds.

Social/personal development. | To develop personal or social capacities.

Seeks to develop personal or social capacities through the arts.Teaching artists work with social service organization partners to achieve social goals…If you were to assess the TA’s work in this thread, you would focus on the goals of the project and find out if they are being attained.

Partnering for non-art goals. | To achieve goals important to other institutions.

This thread finds TAs applying their skills to attain goals that other institutions hold. They work with businesses to increase innovation, to build teamwork, to develop leadership in other words goals that institutions care about. This thread is growing unpredictably, as organizations discover ways that creative engagement can help them achieve their objectives. The TA field has not investigated this thread much yet…If you were to assess the artist’s work, you would focus on the goals of the project and find out if they are being attained.

***I also have some qualms with this purpose thread and one below and some of my own ideas as to how we should perhaps approach a dialogue about these two categories.

+Digital. | To activate personal artistry in digital media.

TA work appears in digital media in electronic portfolios, in searches and communications, in workshops, but the power of teaching artistry has not yet found its footing through the internet, so I identify it as a possible thread because I believe there is a world of opportunity. Such work does appear, as in the Global Exchange of Carnegie Hall, and in online creative projects that appear from individual artists, but this thread still lives in the future.

-Extracted from The Teaching Artists Threads developed by the Lincoln Center Education, 2017

This framework serves as a useful resource for teaching artists to evaluate and explore the purpose and scope of their work and how they assess the impact of the work they do. It is framed as invitation to be used in whatever way makes sense for the user. Even though there the definition and understanding are still being formed and sculpted, this undoubtably serves as a great place to start in building the infrastructure needed to grow the field of teaching artistry.