At Issue: Everyone An Artist

good evening and welcome to at issue I'm twily on what you just saw was the beginning of a dance concert at Miller Junior High School in Marshalltown the event was a high point of that community's involvement a few weeks ago in the artist in a school's program artist in the school's is a project of the Iowa Arts Council what that project does is to bring professional producing artists into a school system for a short period of time the theory is that contact with such individuals broadens the students perceptions of art and artists in a way that merely studying about that art cannot do now while in the school whether it's for a couple of days or a couple of weeks the artist essentially continues his or her activities whether it's songwriting wood carving painting dancing or storytelling in addition there are workshops discussions and generally a chance for the students to try their hands at whatever type of activity this artist is displaying artists in the school's takes on about as many forms as there are artists and schools involved schools join the program looking for widely divergent results and artists have vastly different talents and activities to offer a class or a school system but there are at least a couple of aspects that all artists in the school's residency share each takes planning and each costs money the money is spent primarily to pay the artist for his or her time the Iowa Arts Council using state money and money from the National Endowment for the Arts puts two thirds of the bill the school system pays the other third this evening we're going to show you a couple of different types of artists in the school's program one took an entire year to plan it costs $15,000 and it lasted two weeks the other was relatively simple to set up it cost a couple of hundred dollars and it lasted two days what they have in common is that they both set out to show students teachers and parents that in some way to some extent everyone is an artist the Ryrie would very dance company of Salt Lake City is a professional modern dance company which spends a good deal of its time performing in public or paying audiences but not by any means all of its time when surely Ryrie enjoying would very choose dancers for this small but popular company they look not only for outstanding performers well schooled at their craft they look as well for individuals who are good teachers who are able to communicate with children dancers who are committed to the concept that expressive movement is possible and desirable for everyone it is that commitment that brings this world traveled Ryrie Woodbury dance company to a tiny stage in Marshalltown and to similar programs all over the country all parts of the body the heart of the artist in a schools program is the contact between artist and student with a group like Rio Woodbury the residency is extended in this case a couple of weeks long and there is at least some contact by way of this performance and assembly or a workshop with hundreds of students from the school system but there is also a core group who take part in extensive sessions and who perform in public with the dancers in Marshalltown there were 32 students in the core group including sixth graders david knox and jill Danone of how did working with these entities that make you feel sorry my joy was so good and motioning have fun and they worked with us and got two tapes and those records and got to dance to them and go down the stage and go into the audience and a lot of spare time I joined done anything like this before - no not at all you had had dancing lessons they have ballet not much stuck for years - was this a different kind of movement than you studied Indian mm-hmm like rock and roll you did shapes and collage things and dreams anything like again just one time with with the school what sort of things like the hustle rocking lost our fight who's like that is dancing yeah it'll be stretching well now you told me to say to say YUM had you two different kinds of shape what do they say to you what kind of things did they say to you and how they treat you to get you to do all these different things with your body we just took our own shape and they agreed with it it kind of changed it and like we took we laid on a floor and good shape or you stood up or medium high so had you ever talked to a dancer before no first time what did you expect I mean your teachers and everything had told you that these people were coming they were fun what I expect oh wow doll upside the cock while they were here working with you did you find out anything that you could do that you didn't know you could do yeah move and such fastest looks looks like shall we go and school like that you such well like time you can go slow and then that why I know that well it was just kind of fun and joyful it is for working with the dancers kind of we've talked about you okay and sound like professionals anything they just regular people and they copy and make jokes and everything is fun that's the prime few hundred I thought they'd be serious and all that they wanted their live and just jump it all around and like dancers the head live jumping around dancer is surely Ryrie what kind of motivation would get a company like yours involved in a program like artisan well it's a very satisfying program and Arsenal schools usually last for two weeks so you have time get into a community get enough people everybody's revved up before you come so they've been working for about a year to get this residency established and by the time you get there everybody's very excited so things happen if you're in a class working with children and they just seen you in a performance such as this one they won't do the best you know they come bringing a lot of energy and because of that you have many more meaningful experiences you have life-changing things happen to teachers or to children that you're working with it's very satisfying what about to y'all what kind of an effect does this kind of experience have on your own your network your own creative well one thing it allows us to perform a great deal and we're all dancers and we love performance if you're not touring you're limited how many performances you can give you stayed in as you stayed in Salt Lake we give maybe three seasons a year there's a lot of time in between when you're not performing going around the road we're performing every week and this is of course you grow as a dancer you become better and better more proficient you understand your craft and you have this feedback the give-and-take of working for an audience which is very exciting and my camp is it a lot of excuses all your performances I may be the first time behavior yes nothing often time we're pioneers in the community that first the first one and dance well the thing that happens of course this part of this program is to show dance is an art form and then when we get in the classroom we are working with them themselves so they learn to express themselves they used to learn to use movement of the tool for that expression and movement is very readily available to all of us the younger we are the more available it is so young children of that movement is they're ready to express and they begin to have a wonderful feeling about themselves they have success they do what they saw us do and they're excited about it they feel good about themselves make feel good about each other because we do a lot of socializing things in the dance we do things with partners and with groups there's a lot of planning creative problem-solving so there's a lot of positive feedback that comes through working with dance and this is what happens to the children they we see images change we see children who are shy suddenly come out and begin to be involved we see children who haven't been very interested suddenly become very interested in school because this is happening married and they have success as the FCC and it sometimes will turn a kid in around so that he gets a good feeling about himself and then wants to learn about other things as well a lot of your program today was sharing time to clean with the audience at one point you have the students wiggle their hands yeah their kids and we're going show is very excited about that and at one point some of your dancers come into the audience and good idea for an improvisation advance from them and that worked very smoothly today in and out of the audience we do that so the audience will become part of us so they will feel they are involved in the performance that this is their performance as well as ours and by that give-and-take they become much more warm to what they're seeing and we're receptive to it they enter in they become part of it the students became a part of it here by supplying the ideas and excitement for an improvisational dance and they became part of it when they discovered that dancing means using not only your body but your imagination for instance who ever heard of dancing with crutches Hey you you you Oh but it doesn't necessarily take a year's worth of planning thousands of dollars and a whole dance troupe from Salt Lake City to have an artist in the Schools program there are less complicated and less expensive ways to do it as we'll see in a moment Green elementary school serving the north-central Iowa town of green population about 2000 is having some funding problems that's not unusual in small Iowa towns these days but it causes difficulties nonetheless the shortage of funds in this case has meant that Green Elementary had to give up its full-time art teacher all these students still have regular art classes but no longer are those classes taught by someone who is primed with new ideas about visual and tactile creativity part of the answer to greens dilemma is guy what key what key is a working potter from central Iowa he lived on a farm and makes his living selling the pots and pitchers plates and piggy banks that he makes in his pottery studio but he is also a certified art education teacher a skilled craftsman who plain likes kids the artists in the Schools program provides according to him a chance to maintain contact with young people a relief from the loneliness of the studio and at least some supplemental income for the students there is a chance to see a pot throne a chance to talk to someone who makes things beautiful things with his hands and a chance to find out that there are common strains in our daily lives that hook us all together if only we look for them these youngsters found out this day for instance that a pottery kiln is not unlike corn dryer that was a major moment of recognition they also found out how a lump of clay turns into a pitcher you have to watch this will happen fast I'm just pressing straight down in the center to within about a quarter of an inch to the bottom all right and I pull the bottom out a couple inches smooth it out and I'll show you I know you can't see the inside right now so I can hold this up you see what it looks like in there neato huh I think so too okay this is going to be a cylinder and I'll turn it into a picture but for right now I'll just throw a straight walled cylinder look about like the shape of a tin can okay now you have to watch this is going to look like magic but it's really not all I'm doing is squeezing the clay through my fingers and forcing it up okay I'll show you what I mean so that's change shape it's got a little bit thinner tell me what leaves that trail that little line okay I see a hand up over here what right my hand are my fingers just leave the trail where they've been okay now I could get rid of those at the sponge but I like the way they look so I leave them there there we go I know I'm making this look very easy but you've got to very keep your hand very steady and very still and it takes a lot of time and practice or something just like anything you can't get discouraged at first you've got to keep trying and working at it and practice lots and lots of practice okay and I'll clean up the bottom okay now what else does a pitcher need okay okay besides the handle what does it need all right a pouring spout right okay and how do you think I'm going to do that okay right okay now watch I'm going to take these two fingers and support the side of the picture and take this finger and pull the clay down okay there it is the artist of the school's program has seen phenomenal growth since its introduction into Iowa six years ago and with good reason according to Iowa Arts Council education coordinator Nance Tilian I think the creative process the how to's of something very tangible is something appeal to everybody at any age but in the schools the fact that you have a professional who is so expert at something doing it for the kids they're they're important enough to be the audience they are important enough to be considered worthy of learning it and the artist treats them very much as people not as littler creatures or as someone to be told what to do the artists treat them as some extent equals in the learning process and it's a it's a how-to program to a great extent the theory and conceptual work is kept pretty much after the demonstration and the showing of how to so the motivation is already built into it people need suddenly to feel part of something creative I think because so many of the creative processes that were part of daily life have been taken away from us or not taken away but they have dissolved as a result of a mechanized society a lot of people would say that there are tremendous needs in our society remedial kinds of need people who don't have enough to eat people who don't have good places to live how in light of that by spending money on public money on the arts no there's no question that people have to have houses and food and warm places to live in but there's just a strong demand for the food for the spirit and the art and creative process is something that has never been recognized as an essential of life what it is if creativity is an essential of life the artist in the school's program is becoming more and more popular as a vehicle for stimulating that creativity in large numbers of students when the program began during the school year of 1971-72 four artists had contact with less than 600 people in three towns the Iowa Arts Council that year chipped in $12,000 from a National Endowment for the Arts grant over the years the state has gradually committed funds to the program and the National Endowment involvement has grown during this school year the Iowa Arts Council estimates over a hundred thousand persons will have contact with some 300 artists and that somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred thousand dollars will be pumped into the program statewide according to Nance dillion schools are requesting more programs than the council has money to provide but perhaps the most dramatic response has been from the students and the teachers themselves David ELLs principal of green elementary school says that the presence in his school of artists like Potter guywhat keep offer an excitement for the students a stimulation and ultimately a positive experience about the artist and about themselves Richard Doyle who coordinated the Ryrie Woodbury visit to Marshalltown says that there is more to educating children than offering academic fundamentals there is he says a need to provide experiences which develop a child's self-confidence an opportunity for children to experience success an atmosphere that helps bring divergent parts of a complex world into perspective in a child's mind art in its myriad forms can help to do just that now of course lurking around the edges of any such project is the question is it worth it is it worth the time the money the risk of intangible results in response to that question one administrator with the Marshalltown project said come see if we're still using expressive movement as a teaching and learning tool three years from now I'm Twyla young goodnight