{"id":5602,"date":"2010-03-12T10:58:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T10:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/the-verbs-of-art-a-conversation-with-eric-booth\/"},"modified":"2010-03-12T10:58:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T10:58:00","slug":"the-verbs-of-art-a-conversation-with-eric-booth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/the-verbs-of-art-a-conversation-with-eric-booth","title":{"rendered":"The Verbs of Art: A Conversation With Eric Booth"},"content":{"rendered":"

9:15am |<\/strong> Eric Booth will be the keynote speaker at the Arts Education Summit<\/a>, taking place on Saturday, March 27th at the Hotel Maya<\/a>. Organized by Arts Council for Long Beach<\/a>, the Summit features four break-out sessions, one for parents, one for administrators, and two for teachers. <\/p>\n

Booth has had multiple career paths. He’s performed as an actor on and off Broadway. He’s taught at Stanford, NYU, Julliard, The Kennedy Center, and Lincoln Center, in addition to endlessly traveling across the country and around the world as a highly respected guest lecturer. <\/p>\n

He’s also written a number of books<\/a> about extensively researched American culture trends, and has been quoted extensively in the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared as an expert on NBC News and CNN. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities in arts education?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: It is a transition time in arts education. After a decade of slow erosion in NCLB [No Child Left Behind], there is a sense that the old game must change. Schools are not committed to arts education any more than our culture is. So arts education needs to illuminate its importance in new ways. <\/p>\n

I understand Long Beach is something of an unusual setting in that both the arts are more valued in the city than in most cities and arts education has not lost as much ground as elsewhere. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Well, it has been a struggle on both counts, but we have made some headway as well.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: I saw that a new city council plan that is quite pro arts was recently passed. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: For arts education, perhaps the most significant change was the adoption of the Cultural Master Plan into the City’s overarching 2030 Plan. Having that community-developed vision in place will help shape all future decisions. Still, nobody is sure how that will actually work.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: That is why the Summit seems timely to me. One of the things the field has learned is that arts ed doesn’t thrive in a city that does not value the arts–they are not separate. A city with an arts vision cannot realize it, even with a long range vision as in 2030, without a robust and sustainable arts education commitment. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Have you worked with Cities that have been successful in establishing this overarching vision and, if so, what kinds of results were realized?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: There are few cities that have longitudinal data to this effect. More recent efforts are underway in Dallas in particular, which is following a “creativity” banner but has coordinated\/bundled the in-school, after-school, and larger arts policy issues. Other cities with a good reputation for the beginnings of this kind of coordination are Providence RI, Philadelphia (is trying), and Chicago. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: So, have results emerged from these efforts?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: The results are so disparate that there is little cause and effect data to build upon that is new. Dallas is full of promise and early data, but it is all in the last couple of years, so it can’t be relied upon yet. Many major cities seem to be addressing the deficits around these issues–the LACK of coordination, funding-efficiency thinking, and larger vision–but few have gathered action plans beyond the planning phase. But the trend is the realization of the problem and the beginning of addressing it through multiple institutions and not silo by silo. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: How about outside the U.S.? Are there models we should be exploring, or adopting, here?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: Big yes. The lead countries in my view are Scotland and Finland. Scotland has a national creativity agenda, and a brand new national curriculum, and are adopting a “creativity across the curriculum” policy to realize their educational, cultural, and citizenship goals. <\/p>\n

Finland has a deeply embedded conviction to schooling in the arts, to learn how make art, AND to arts integration. As much as 80% of a Finnish kids school day is spent involved in the arts as they are actively involved in teaching every subject <\/p>\n

\"\"Sander<\/strong>: Well, this is a subject I have great personal interest in. I’ve often wondered why school districts do not use a ‘unified’ curriculum, one that integrates each subject into all the others in a synergistic way. Can you speak to that?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: You are so right. Your sense is the natural way people learn and the way learning research tells us learners function at their best. The arts happen to be particularly effective as catalyst and glue for learning. (I have MUCH to say about why.) I think U.S. schooling silos subjects for old traditional reasons of institutional convenience, for old factory model institutional organization, and because of counter-productive turf and identity wars. <\/p>\n

This is a huge school reform issue, and I see U.S. schools as resistant to reform. They evolve but do not respond to pressure. I don’t fight the school reform battle anymore–I have seen too many tiny ups and downs that I thought were change, and now I see the change is evolutionary not revolutionary. The arts will never serve the role in schools they could, should, and organically do because the entrenchements are too great, and America’s affinity for the arts too weak, and too much misunderstanding links the arts with high arts and elitism when they are so much more. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: This is the challenge for us, now. How is it that we bring a greater awareness of relevence to our elected leaders, and to the public?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: This is the great advocacy question, and we have to admit we have not succeeded to date. I think we misunderstand both advocacy and art. Let me redefine both. Advocacy is not changing what people think, it is changing what people do. And people base their actions not on what they think but on what they believe. And it is a very different challenge to change what someone believes. It requires a lot of listening, a lot of dialogue, a lot of understanding, and not so much “convincing.” <\/p>\n

Yes, we need data and research, but as much we need them to see and feel and understand how arts learning provides the results they believe in. I define art not by its nouns as is common–the art WORKS, the special buildings and things we call art–but by its verbs. I think the verbs of art unite people, while the nouns tend to separate. The verbs of art are things we ALL engage in when we are functioning at our highest, most invested, level. <\/p>\n

We used to refer to the art of bricklaying, and it signified that ANY endeavor raised to its highest level of expression becomes the work of art. Using that frame, artistry is high performance and it uses skills everyone places in high priority for youth: The capacity to attend well, to make meaningful connections, to respond with personal voice, to inquire well, to develop good questioning skiills, to engage in making things you care about, to work in full collaboration with others, and so on. <\/p>\n

This is the verb-definition of art that I find everyone believes in, but the default definition of art by artistic media thwarts the ways the arts can serve our kids and cities. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: I’ve seen, first hand, that if you ask kids to share what they’re interested in, they’ll write for an hour, or paint, or sing, or whatever. If you ask every kid to paint the same thing, some will become engaged and others won’t. Is that what you’re talking about?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: That is a sure sign of it. It is a different motivation, intrinsic motivation, in which the arts bloom, and is one of the few areas of school life where kids are invited to engage with their intrinsic motivation and not just for extrinsic reasons. Dan Pink<\/a>‘s new book Drive<\/a> is a powerful statement of this. My working definition of art is make stuff you care about. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: What about your own creative process?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: After years as a NY actor and theater person, I expanded my curiosity to various media–some artistic and some not. I started a business which wasn’t the least bit artsy, but I found the same satisfactions, the same parts of my creative self being applied. When I am making something I care about now, I find I do go through the stages that researchers cite, and in a kind of jumble of idea generation, refinement, choice, gestation, bursts of hands-on construction, etc. But it applies to consulting work, writing, teaching in new ways, even homemaking projects and gardening. As well as to poetry writing or working on a play. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: That, for me, is the joy of being an artist. It is a way of living, of seeing the world, and engaging with it.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: Yep. The verbs are where it lives and it spills apart from the task and media to the way you experience the day, the world, life. It is a way of life, and it is a child’s human birthright to know this and have it available, and we are unconscionable in our ignoring this for every kid. <\/p>\n

Indeed, I think our child-rearing is almost diabolical in squelching these very capacities, natural and human as they are. Usually for commercial intent. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Can you explain what you mean by ‘commercial intent’?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: The creative capacities, the skills of imagination, ideational fluency, development of craft, free play, etc, are colonized by selling toys and online activity that produces high stimulation and instant gratification, and sometimes quite developed interest, but squelch the essential verbs of artistic-birthright we were just discussing. <\/p>\n

A kid is not supported to develop her intrinsic motivation and personal voice, but to buy stuff that she finds interesting. There is much of what psychologists call “slow processing” in the brain that gets underdeveloped by the high stimulation of other parts of the brain. Slow processing includes reflective capacity, moral development, emotional maturity, choice and consequence consideration, etc. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Going back to what you were saying earlier about belief, these things seem like qualities everyone would be interested in developing in their children. <\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: You’d think so. But when it comes down to institutional choices, they seem soft, and get peripheral. Our culture says that is the work of families and social organizations, not schools. They see schools as training young people for the workplace. I don’t happen to agree with that priority, but even if it were a good priority, we are training kids for a workplace that is long gone. So we are failing there too. Easy to say you believe in those values for kids, hard to take action on that in the face of norms, traditions and doubts. We get relegated to the periphery where the arts have launguished. <\/p>\n

Sander<\/strong>: Is the path forward clear? Do you see a process that, when undertaken, will result in a changed outlook about these issues?<\/em> <\/p>\n

Eric<\/strong>: It is going to be a soft answer, I fear. The ONLY answer is a claified goal or vision that is shared, owned, and committed to by multiple stakeholders. And then ongoing dialogue with constant experimentation and course correction to find this path. It is always a LOCAL path, there is no transportable model. The process of illuminating a shared vision, and then finding a way to move toward it IS the solution, the only solution. <\/p>\n

I have worked on such projects in small ways and in a few bigger projects, and it does work. But the territory is uncharted, and the process must be as authentic and wholehearted, human, patient and determined as the result they envision. <\/p>\n

The example of El Sistema in Venezuela is inspiring to me. It has taken 35 years. But 300,000 of the very poorest kids, living in the more dangerous at-risk circumstances, have had their lives transformed by intensive after school arts learning. A whole generation. And the process models the product–a country that loves its poorest kids deeply and well, and provides them with the artistic satisfaction, voice and sense of personal value that the arts deliver so powerfully when taught well. <\/p>\n

— <\/p>\n

Visit the Arts Council for Long Beach website<\/a> for more information about this and other events.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Booth, renowned cultural researcher, educator, and arts education expert is the keynote speaker, and leader of the ‘Learning in the Arts’ break-out session, of the Arts Education Summit, convened by Arts Council for Long Beach, and taking place on Saturday, March 27th, from 9 AM – 2:30 PM at the Hotel Maya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5602"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}