From PRIDE

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Apr. 5, (CMC) – Tertiary level educators across the Caribbean have launched an appeal for greater focus on developing Arts programs at the region’s institutions of higher learning.

They made the call at the opening of the inaugural CSEC/CAPE conference, being held at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, here.

Former theatre Arts Coordinator of the Barbados Community College, Yvonne Weeks — currently a lecturer in Theatre at the Errol Barrow Centre For Creative Imagination, at the University of the west Indies Cave Hill campus — lamented that the Arts are often overlooked as an important component of the region’s social and economic development.

“In 2016, our Caribbean governments are concerned about diversifying their economies as well as building sustainable creative ecologies. Yet one of the major planks of this approach, the training and education of arts teachers, is constantly overlooked.

“We, who are here, know what needs to be done. It is more than just passing exams. It is about soothing the souls of our students, nurturing their love of creative expression, recognising their ability to configure, and deconstruct texts and symbols, in order to recreate and perhaps make new. And in this process, we may introduce, and we want to produce, dancers and actors and filmmakers and so on,” Weekes said.

Principal of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Dr. Nicholeen DeGrasse-Johnson, told the conference there is need for more research into the Arts across the Caribbean.

She also noted that the discipline will help students develop into well-rounded individuals, who will be an asset to the region’s workforce.

“The responsibility for improving arts education in schools rests first in the lap of institutions of higher education,”, and she noted that the future of arts in schools will be profoundly affected by the content of teacher-preparation programs.

Many programs in the region that prepare Art specialists lack foundation in Arts Education research, she added.

“It should be noted that Arts-based theorists, aesthetic education … and so on, are absent from text books that deal with foundations of education,” DeGrasse-Johnson said.

Many argue that Arts educators have isolated themselves from mainstream general regulators, and are being neglected as allies in the fight for arts integration.

She also pointed to a need to reconstruct “the theoretical vision of educational practice that is informed by the Arts”.

DeGrasse-Johnson highlighted the example of Jamaica, which has instituted policies and frameworks, which, according to her, indicates that the island’s decision-makers have understood the need for Arts and Culture to drive human resource development.

“Since pre-independence, government officials have consistently mandated that we need to empower our people by enabling them to know who they are,” she said.

The conference, which ends on Wednesday, is being held under the theme ‘Transforming Society Through the Arts’.

IMAGES:

Dr. Nicholeen DeGrasse-Johnson, Principal of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Photo credit: kamachuka.org.

Yvonne Weeks, a lecturer in Theatre at the Errol Barrow Centre For Creative Imagination, at the University of the west Indies Cave Hill campus. Photo credit: UWI.

For more on this story go to: http://pridenews.ca/2016/04/05/appeal-launched-for-greater-focus-on-the-arts-in-caribbeans-institutions-of-higher-learning/