The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

composition and composers was for him just one of theresults.e The pupils of a third year secondary boys class have been to aperformance of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. As part of this experiencethe music teacher planned a project which involved the pupils inconsidering and discussing the plot and then devising their own musicto reflect the tensions and conflicts within the story. The pupils'performance in their own classroom was not one of Purcell's music,but of their own interpretation of the plot. Their understanding ofthis and of Purcell's music was enhanced by this experience.Each of these examples is of music teaching. Comparableexamples could be taken from each of the arts and for eachof them the central point is the same: that making music,composing and performing, dancing, dramatising, writingand making images is inseparably linked to, and enriched by,learning about music, dance, drama, literature and art: andvice versa. To opt for one at the expense of the other willimpoverish both.59 The There is another aspect to this. Schools are neither islandsschool as a nor cultural ghettoes. They are shot through with the valuescultural of the surrounding cultures. A very wide range of culturalexchange traditions and expectations is likely to be represented in alarge comprehensive school. For this reason schools arebest seen not as transmitters of culture but as complexcultural exchanges. We hold that the arts have a greaterpart to play in (his than they do at present and, in doingso, can enhance greatly the life and atmosphere of theschool itself.In a large multi-racial school in Leeds, for example, the drama andart teachers worked with the children on an adaptation of Alex Haley'sdocumentary novel about Black America, Roots. Haley had spent12 years researching his own cultural background in Africa. The pupilsinterpreted his research through movement, African dance, scripteddialogues and costume. The intention throughout was to 'reflect thesincerity of Haley's commitment to fostering black pride and consciousness'.The resulting production, Kambi Bolongo, was given aspart of a festival of art, music and drama at the school which alsoincluded exhibitions of pupils' drawings, paintings, photography,prints and ceramics. The festival attracted friends and relatives fromthe surrounding communities whose own cultural traditions stretchedacross East Africa, the West Indies, the Indian sub-continent, the FarEast: and Yorkshire.Many of the children at the school are first generation immigrants.The drama and art staff were well aware of the implications for suchchildren .of the differing cultural pressures from home, the school andfrom their friends. Consequently, a principal aim in all their arts work,and exemplified in the festival, has been to help the children 'find43