Photos: Samuli Roininen, Drawings: Students Rahola Primary School, Finland
Hallo.
Greetings from Shanghai. About the arts education.
When thinking of it, there must be hundreds of arts education curricular models which you can choose from. So, how to start?
I might be mistaken, but quite often when talking about arts education we tend to talk about drawing. We have used to the idea that the core discipline of Western art education is the practice of drawing, rather than performing arts as dance, theatre or music.
That may, however be about to chance. I believe, we are bound to get also dance into the schools curriculums.
Here above you can see two of the many drawings made by the students at the Rahola Primary School in Tampere, Finland.
Drawings were made this spring after the students saw the Dancing Moominvalley show at the Hällä stage. As a part of art educational project we also organized a work shop where in five 'shops' the students got to get a little closer of different characters in the show.
One of the core ideas in Toves work has been the individuality of her charachters. Then again, she wanted to emphazise the importance of beeing together. Of experiencing live together. Eather as a family. Or as a group of friends. Dancing together was one way to express the togetherness.
In the project we wanted to show how dance could give the students with such different backgrounds an equal chance to express themselves. This, we thought, could be the main theme also in the future Dancing Moominvalley works shops. - Different dynamics, different movements, all makings sense.
All of the students drawings were also seen at the DANCING MOOMINVALLEY - "In Search of a Synthesis" Symposium in Shanghai. It was a great chance to see them side by side with the digigraphies made of Toves original art work.
The idea in the symposium was to create a collective discuss the art of Jansson from various perspectives:visual, biographical, choreographic, academic and musical. Sirke Happonen, PhD as a chair and interviewer, we tried to open the process of making Dancing Moominvalley. We started by presenting the students drawings.
And eventually we were closing the panel with the idea of an importance of understanding your audience. Learning from your audience. That the arts education is also education for the artists, teachers and organications, not only for the children.
So, thank you, all of you who were participating at the Art & Education Case Rahola Primary School.
You were very much in our minds at the EXPO.
Samuli Roininen, choreographer, Dance Theatre MD
