Creative literacy is a human right and a teachable skill. It is the ability to connect both personally and meaningfully to works of fine art and, through this process, to forge connections to our humanity and the humanity of others.

ALit LP Medium.png

When we practice artistic literacy—past exploring an artist's procedure, understanding artistic concepts, and learning skills within an artistic discipline—we inspire contemplation on the human feel, challenge our beliefs and perceptions, and cultivate our ability to revise what we think we know. We proceeds entrance to works of art that may have seemed inaccessible; nosotros experience a sense of ownership and belonging.

What follows is an business relationship of artistic literacy as both a defining concept and a pedagogical framework. Fatigued from the writing and thinking of the Cal Performances Creative Literacy staff , in joyful collaboration with affiliated artists and educators , the observations and declarations prepare forward here build on decades of best practices while seeking as well to offer a firm foundation for next steps. This is a living document—one we promise to revisit and revise every bit our work continues to inform us.

Where Does the Phrase "Artistic Literacy" Come From?

To quote Descartes, "One cannot excogitate anything so strange and and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another." Every bit a phrase, "artistic literacy" can be traced to numerous disparate conversations apropos best practices in arts-based learning and community engagement.

For instance, the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards spearheaded an all-encompassing and inclusive review process culminating in the 2014 release of the National Core Arts Standard (NCAS)—a narrative "conceptual framework" certificate for arts learning that included the post-obit definition:

"Creative literacy is the cognition and understanding required to participate authentically in the arts."

Less defining than it is inviting, this argument opens onto a complex set of questions: What is authentic participation in an art form? What does knowledge of an art course look like and how can information technology be taught and experienced? What is understanding of an art form? How can we know when someone has sufficient noesis and agreement to participate authentically?

Our thinking and work aims seriously to answer these questions—to movement from merely imagining to actively creating new laboratories for inquiry-based explorations. Having our home base in a public university-affiliated performing arts eye means our model was catalyzed in particular by live works of art and by the challenge of creating supportive experiences for audition members beyond an extraordinarily diverse range of backgrounds and needs.

Consequently, where the NCAS document frames "accurate participation" primarily in terms of fine art-making—foregrounding the explicit cultivation of expressive techniques within each of 5 major categories (dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts)—our approach is more interested in participation as defined through a sense of personal, meaningful connectedness. While this sense may indeed exist aided by direct experiences of art-making, nosotros detect it important to distinguish art practice from arts access.

Through our artistic literacy model, nosotros seek to facilitate individual experiences of the arts that, regardless of each participant'south prior knowledge, experience both personally relevant and specifically attainable.

Foo

Foo

Artistic Literacy as an Agent for Personal, Meaningful, Connection

For many audience members and some teachers, the purpose of seeking out more noesis or skill around a work of fine art is to arrive at a confident value judgment—an ability to distinguish "good" art from "bad." By focusing instead on how audition members derive pregnant from their arts encounters, we suggest a different purpose: to motion from a state of indifference to a land of curiosity, and to thereby lay the groundwork for whole continuities of future experience.

Hands%2BIcon.jpg

Similar John Dewey, we believe that the quality of an experience impacts the significant we attribute to information technology and that meaningful experience both reinforces and inspires additional forms of learning. At the same time, we hold that individuals derive meaning from their contemplation of each experience in constellation with the many other things that inform their lives.

For these reasons, nosotros define the quality of an arts encounter less in terms of the perceived worth, richness, or virtuosity of the featured artwork, than in terms of the presence or absence of structures that allow an audition member to admit and treat as valid their personal paths to meaningful connexion.

Key to our methodology is a detailed accounting of the many means a sense of significant can sally from artwork to artwork, individual to individual. Equally central is a delivery to the labor of articulation and translation—of determining the vocabulary, concepts, and pedagogical modes that propel and expand an audience member'due south research into their own experience.

Though we do observe special value in works of art that offer numerous points of entry beyond a broad range of audience demographics—works that ofttimes, therefore, are widely considered to be "bang-up"—we firmly believe that an audience member needn't make it at similar conclusions in order to have had a meaningful meet.

In identify of questions about excellence, likability, or "getting information technology right," therefore, we enquire the following: "What does it mean to you that the artist has performed this work in your presence?" This is the question nosotros hope our audience members volition feel increasingly able to hear and to answer.

Why "Artistic" and Why "Literacy"?

These two words—each loaded with its ain social, psychological, emotional and intellectual resonances—frequently meet with some resistance when used in combination. All the same it is precisely because of the weight they can comport that we go along to notice them constructive.

In the United States, the standardized didactics of linguistic and numerical literacy gives primary condition to these ii forms of meaning-making, as if all noesis can exist seized and expressed through numbers and words alone. The very beingness of creative expression, all the same, challenges this supposition.

Some assert, ofttimes vehemently, that works of art speak for themselves. In some cases, for some people, this may indeed experience true. But many others, including a growing number of researchers, assert that the arts are more akin to a fix of languages (or, for that matter, a series of interlocking codes).

As we propose above, connecting with and through the arts—fifty-fifty, and mayhap especially, when one is not seeking to be thought of as an artist—requires introduction, practise, community, context, and mentorship over time. We experience the give-and-take "creative" captures this interactive procedure and steers us away from thinking of the arts in terms of passive encounters impervious to pedagogy.

We've besides noticed that naming a "literacy" oftentimes evokes its opposite: illiteracy. This tin create anxiety for some and a feeling of insult for others because illiteracy is ofttimes associated with ignorance, lack of capacity, or lack of status, rather than lack of opportunity. Part of the work of claiming "artistic literacy" as a phrase is in pushing back against the stigmas and presumptions surrounding conditions of illiteracy.

By holding artistic literacy on par with numerical and linguistic literacy, we make explicit its part in our ability to make sense of our shared human experience. Nosotros also call for a more than robust understanding of the atmospheric condition and potentials for admission.

1

2

Framing Artistic Literacy every bit a Human being Right

Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: "Anybody has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in scientific advocacy and its benefits." As such, "enjoyment" of the arts is formally recognized every bit a human being right in and of itself. But what does this actually mean?

Foo

Implicit in Article 27, we feel, is the supposition that works of art have and give meaning, and that—in a world of increasing divisiveness and isolated experience—the act of gathering together around art and functioning holds continuing significance for individuals and communities.

At the same fourth dimension, we annotation that access to "enjoyment" is as challenging and idea-provoking to ensure as admission to "gratis" or "authentic" participation. To have such admission to the arts—whether the end result is a feeling of enjoyment or simply of having participated fully and wholly every bit yourself—y'all must first have the means to perceive and overcome advisory, transportational, social, and economic barriers, amid many others.

By framing artistic literacy in terms of human rights, we emphasize it every bit a necessary source of power and self-actualization for all and assert that information technology is significantly deserving of our resource, attention, and fourth dimension.

In the procedure of developing and hosting opportunities for artistic literacy to flourish, it can be easy to misfile potential strategies with desired outcomes. By reminding ourselves that engagement is something that must be cultivated—rather than something we can just demand or enact—we are better able to perceive and uphold the qualities of a supportive learning environment.

Audition engagement is i of the most challenging things to measure. Traditional metrics like audience size, ticket sales, or omnipresence at satellite events requite u.s.a. little bodily insight into the quality or depth of each individual'southward experience. Even observational data like how long someone lingers at a mail service-functioning chat, how many questions they ask, or how active they are in conversation with others tin just tell usa so much.

Having the means to articulate or act on a sense of connexion is itself a trained skill, and those who experience able to written report their experiences are just a subset of the those who might have something to say. Add together to this the fact that a feeling of appointment might non come nearly immediately—it might only emerge after many days or weeks of reflection or make itself known through a desire to reflect over time.

Considering our goal is to support personal, meaningful connections, our model prioritizes strategies that encourage audition members non only to feel personally welcome at each outcome, but also to feel supported and seen in their experience of an artwork. Construction, light facilitation, and hospitable, social spaces are all integral aspects of our events, and we go along ourselves grounded through what we call our "4 I's":

Invitational
Inclusionary
Intentional
Intimate

We've learned that these qualities, when foundational to a learning environment, are near likely to foster the outcomes we value.

ALit Engagement Photo.png