Different Theatres, Different Audiences: the Arts and the Education of Adults

Different theatres, different audiences: the arts and the education of adults

David J Jones, University of Nottingham

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 29th Annual Conference, 5-7 July 1999, University of Warwick

During many years of organising conferences on the arts in adult education there have been numerous occasions when I have been concerned that proposals for papers were, in my view, either ‘not art education’ or ‘peripheral to art education’. Over the years it has become clear that there are many adult education practitioners who thought that they were involved in an aspect of the arts in adult education but who, to my mind, were not. I have recently begun to think that their work deserved more attention and to regret what might have been a too hasty initial judgement about what space it occupied in the arts in adult education.

This sort of adult education arts work occupied different spaces in the education of adults to the work in the arts with which I was familiar and which fitted easily into the conceptual frameworks I habitually used. The opportunity to write this paper has allowed me to focus on this other type of arts activity and to try to locate it in relation to those spaces in adult education occupied by mainstream arts work.

To illustrate this analysis I will draw on work from unpublished papers and from abstracts submitted for conferences as well as from more regular published sources.

In an abstract submitted for an arts and adult education conference, Susan Taylor (1997) writes as follows:

When many of us think of drama, we envision theatre with a stage and rows of spectators. Indeed, the term ‘drama’ does not usually conjure up an image of a diabetes education session... The presenters have used drama and humour to facilitate learning about diabetes with clients and other health care providers. They have also used it to educate other diabetes educators about educational theatre... By conveying everyday situations and using everyday language that people experience in their day-to-day lives, the fear, stigma and confusion of the diabetic condition becomes more manageable. Drama is one way in which educators can enhance the quality of their education programme. This educators’ sharing session will explore the reasons why drama, humour and diabetes education are a great mix... Dramatic sketches which involve the audience, use humour and explore issues related to living with diabetes will be enacted. Research findings pertaining to the barriers that may prevent health educators from using drama and humour in their work will be presented.

Renata Malcer Dymarska (1997) in an abstract for the same conference writes:

‘Museum of Stories’ is an open archives (sic) collecting relations and stories about experiences of inhabitants of Gdansk and our region. The stories will be recorded on paper, tapes and video. There are also photos, journals and other things connected with the stories. All of them will be placed in the Museum.

The purpose of the archives is to present a really alive history, individual subjective stories. It should be a possibility for everyone to add his own personal experiences, memories to objective factual history.....

Gdansk played a very important part in the newest Polish history. There is a place where political changes began and where Solidarity was born.’

In an abstract which shows how story telling can encourage participation in corneal grafting schemes, D. M. S. Dissamayake (1997) writes;

The Buddha, it is said, from time to time related stories of his previous lives in order to illustrate different points of doctrine. More than five hundred such Jathaka stories are handed down orally and later written down.

The story goes that King SIVI, who was a great philanthropist, once asked a blind beggar what he needed. “ Oh great Sire, what else do I need except sight?” was his reply. The King summoned his personal physician and enquired whether sight could be restored to the poor man. After careful consideration the physician answered in the affirmative, but only if a pair of fresh eyes are available. The King offered his own eyes and when the physician declined, the King gave an order and the operation was performed without delay. Ultimately, vision was restored to the blind man.

In a paper given at the 5th International Conference on Adult Education and the Arts in Jerusalem Mary Hawkins (1996) writes about Arts Centres and Arts Associations thus:

In some, programmes are wide and participatory and break down racial barriers and previous social attitudes to the arts through multi-media activities - although perhaps the generation gap is at its widest within the cultural sphere. Some centres are trying to foresee the likely effect of being within a new unitary authority. Arts centres are enabling people to do things impossible anywhere else. Earlier this year a conference in Nottingham entitled ‘The Art of Regeneration’ was held in a mood of optimism as local government officials spoke of witnessing or facilitating “ a resurgence of arts related activities”, few of which would have been seen a few years ago. Is this due to a new enlightened attitude in local authorities or “a new boldness on the part of those engaged in the arts” or the arrival of the Lottery?

In a paper presented at the same conference, Paul Edelson writes;

Initially my own area of focus was adult art education. This preoccupation was tied to my own personal rediscovery of making art which had been submerged for over thirty years and wanting to be more creative myself. Then I applied it to leadership studies, another area of interest. I teach graduate and extra-mural courses on leadership. Wanting to be a better more creative leader. Combining both themes I taught a short course this winter on “Creativity and Leadership” to engineers and senior executives for a Long Island high-technology firm to help them become more creative and better leaders...

...The purpose of this initiative is to assist high-technology, formerly defence industry oriented companies, to redirect their productivity to peacetime industrial production. The firm I was to be working with designed high-technology components for military use and was now trying to develop product applications in transportation and health technology fields.

And finally, in a keynote address to the 4th International Conference on Adult Education and the Arts, Paul Nolan (1996:47) from Belfast argued for community arts as follows:

That, to me, is a good illustration of how art can be used to reflect a community. And yet we know that art can do something else, something even more valuable. Not just expressing the values of an existing community but going beyond that. You see it is possible, I think, for art to actually create a new community, to allow new identifications to be made between people.

And (1996:48),

Which is the function that art should have. To destabilise fixed ideas and existing identities; to help us find a new way of seeing, of hearing, of thinking of feeling. To help us move into a different space where different rules apply: the rules of rhythm, colour, line, form, movement, melody, harmony. And to find from those experiences new ways of experiencing our communities, our neighbours, our society.

The purpose of the above extracts is to give the reader a first idea of the range of activities which can be included in this category of provision which is not essentially arts education but somehow relates in a direct way to aspects of arts education. Above, we have examples from health education, local history, urban regeneration schemes, community development and leadership training. I could have included more examples from oral history projects, political education, transformative education, women’s education, racial awareness training or environmental education, to name but some of the ways in which the arts are used.

These activities, which are perceived by many as being part of the arts in adult education, stand alongside the regular arts courses which most of us would recognise. These include painting classes, literature courses, art history, music appreciation and the like.

I have written before (Jones 1988:55-108) about the different ways in which people engage with the arts. They engage as either an audience for the arts, appreciators; as creative writers, painters, sculptors, choreographers or composers, creators; or as actors, singers, musicians or dancers, participators in the arts. Insofar as the examples quoted above relate to arts activity we can see that here also people engage in the arts in these three different ways.

It is no wonder that from one perspective, what they’re doing may get confused with straightforward art activity; no wonder that they appear to occupy the same adult educational space. Nor is it a question of whether or not these activities reinforce cultural values or seek to develop them. Both in orthodox arts courses and in these courses, which use the processes of the arts, we can find examples of approaches which seek to teach the canon of great work which is enshrined in a culture, as well as examples of work which seeks to promote and develop that culture, the new and daring work of the avant garde.

The distinction which is becoming clear here is that between education in the arts and education through the arts. On the one hand, we have those classes whose primary purpose is to encourage people to engage with the arts in one of the ways described above. These take place, both literally and metaphorically, in spaces recognised as belonging to arts activity. These are the studios and galleries, the theatres and concert halls, the libraries and the cinemas of the contemporary arts world.

On the other hand we have those adult education activities where the arts are seen as instrumental. Where arts activities are used to promote other ends; outcomes which are extrinsic to the arts. These latter take place in different arenas. They take place in health centres and in community spaces, in factories and offices, in the open air or round a camp fire.

If we analyse these activities in conventional pedagogic terms we can see that they have different aims and objectives. In the first case, the aims will be to do with the creation of, participation in or enjoyment of the arts. In the second case the aims will be to do with a healthy community, a new self awareness, more creative businessmen or a new community spirit.

And because the aims and objectives are different in educational terms, the way we evaluate the success of these programmes will be different. It is no use making comments about the painting if the purpose of the exercise is community development. Success here is measured, if indeed it can be measured, in terms of empowerment, of whether or not the community has developed a new identity and taken control of its own affairs.

Education through art, (some readers will remember the influential book by Herbert Read about child education which goes by this name) then, is that sort of adult education activity which uses arts activities to achieve ends which are tangential to the arts.

These two approaches to adult education in and through the arts merit closer examination. The analysis begs certain questions.

What is the nature of the creative, appreciative and participatory activity which students engage in when they are involved in education through the arts? Are these activities the same, of the same level of intensity and commitment, as those activities engaged in by people who are undertaking adult education activities in the arts? Is the nature of the creative activity engaged in by participants the same for both groups. Do both groups come to appreciate the arts in the same way? Do actors in community drama, or in a role-play undertaken as part of a political education course, become involved in portraying (adopting?) a role in the same way as professional actors?

I have explored the literature on creativity elsewhere (Jones:1998). By and large it is seen as a process which involves both conscious and unconscious processes. Many writers talk of the anxiety states inherent in creative work. Part of creative capacity is the ability to tolerate these anxiety states and resolve the unknown and unplanned aspects of the work in hand.

It is suggested that the artist perceives the work of art as having life of its own, telling the creator what to do next. The artist relates to the work like another person and enters into a dialogue with the work. Any desire to control the work should be resisted. The artist should be sensitive to the work and allow unconscious processes to operate, rather than try to think through the problems inherent in the work in a conscious analytical way.

Now, one can see that these abilities might be useful to someone in a leadership role and it may be that in leadership training involvement in the creative process at this level is a legitimate way to achieve the educational goals of the project. But can the same be said of community arts creative work? It has always been a puzzle to me how groups can engage in creative work. Either the theoretical framework is inadequate or there is something going on other than artistic creativity as it is understood in the literature.

In the literature on creativity it is suggested that the metaphorical images which are created, either visual, verbal or musical, arise from unconscious processes and these processes must be allowed free rein. It is difficult to see how a group could engage in this activity. Indeed, creativity is usually seen as a rather solitary affair with the artist interacting with the canvas in such a way that there is no awareness of anything taking place in the vicinity.

Experience suggests that if someone else were to participate in this activity, then the necessary level of involvement would be lost. An artist would quite simply resent someone else participating in this creative activity. Is there any such thing as group creativity?

Certainly in the visual arts it is difficult to conceive of such an activity. The gable-end murals which have arisen from so many community arts projects are often organised in such a way that participants act as technicians, doing what the artist who designed the work tells them. Su Braden (1978) has documented this in her study ‘Artists and People’. Whilst there may be discussions about the subject matter, the professional is usually in control of the project and the local members of the community do no more than follow instructions.

These may be good enough to establish community ownership of the work and to achieve community development objectives but it is difficult to see how these people were genuinely involved in creative activity.

Examples from music and drama might be more helpful. Certainly the example of jazz provides us with a model of creative activity undertaken by several people. Just how this works and how the processes of creation unfold have not, to my knowledge, been documented. Certainly it represents a dynamic sort of creativity where those involved respond quickly and intuitively to the actions of others. The process moves quickly with no time to think in a rational logical way. The type of attention and perception required by this activity seems to be similar to what Bartley, (1980:19) refers to as a mode of personal existence. Jazz seems to fit somewhere between what he calls the ‘appreciative mode’ and the ‘motoric mode’;

The first is the appreciative mode, which is the general state that characterises the individual at a symphony or at an opera or at an art gallery. The various patterns of impingement (of stimuli upon the senses) are reacted to with a disposition of extracting pleasure and appreciation. The organism is in a state of searching for understanding and pleasure.

A second mode is called the motoric mode, this is exemplified by players in a game of football. The major responses to all that affect eyes and ears are motor. The players run, pause, pivot, avoid other players and so forth. These motor responses are perceptual responses.

Such modes of existence can be seen to operate in the group which is both listening to and appreciating the musical sounds made by other members of the group whilst at the same time using mouth, breath and hands to produce sounds which will complement those of the others.

Community drama offers a different model. Here members of the community construct a piece of drama. They may improvise; they may involve themselves in reminiscences. The play is constructed, but, as with the visual arts, this is often done under the guidance of a professional. Much of the work goes on at a conscious level and there is often little involvement in that type of creative activity described in the literature. Again, this involvement in a communal activity may be enough to achieve the aims of a community development project. Participants may well view each other in different ways, re-value their community, its history and traditions, and may even feel empowered by the experience to the extent that they wish to take a greater control over their lives. But I remain sceptical that the activity they were involved in could be described as creative in strictly artistic terms. Educational it undoubtedly was, but not creative in the sense that I have explained it.