CHILDREN & SOCIETY (1995) 9:4, PP.

5-14

Children, Society and the Arts

Ken Robinson, Professor of Arts Education,
University of Warwick

Introduction
This issue of Children & Society includes five articles on the arts and
young people. These articles develop two key themes. First, involvement
in the arts can contribute in fundamental ways to the development of
childrens innate capabilities, to their self-esteem and to their positive
engagement with society. Second, these roles of the arts are not ade-
quately recognised in provision for young people, including formal educa-
tion. As a result, and to that extent, the quality and effectiveness of
educational and social provision for children and young people is
reduced.

Attitudes and provision

The first two articles report on recent national research into attitudes to,
and provision for, the arts for young people. Buzzes and barriers, by
John Harland and Kay Kinder, presents some of the findings of a
research project on youth participation in the arts undertaken by the
National Foundation for Educational Research. The study aimed to pro-
vide a national picture of young peoples participation in the arts both
within and outside formal education. This article draws on evidence col-
lected through interviews with over 700 young people between the ages
of 14 and 24 in five different regions of England. Material from these
interviews is used to propose a typology of both positive and negative
attitudes towards the arts, and to identify those attitudes that most fre-
quently accompany high levels of involvement. The research strongly
suggests that young people become involved in the arts principally as
ways of expressing their own sense of identity, and for the sense of per-
sonal self-esteem and satisfaction that results.
Research in the early 1980s by David Hargreaves (Hargreaves, 1983)
described how individuals may be drawn into passionate engagement
with the arts by powerful and transformative experiences with particular
works or events. He called these experiences conversive traumas. The
religious allusion is not accidental. Hargreaves argued, as others have
done, that the arts tap into deep emotional and spiritual currents in
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Ken Robinson

human consciousness. For many people, the practice and appreciation of

the arts are essential to a fulfilled life. Harland and Kinder provide evi-
dence of this potential of the arts in the lives of young people. They
argue too that the processes of engagement in the arts may be neither
sudden nor traumatic. As often, they result from more gradual processes
of contact with the arts, perhaps through working with committed
adults, and especially with teachers. Consequently, their research points
not only to the potential of the arts for young people, but to the necessity,
in realising that potential, of a sustained involvement in the arts in
schools.
Rick Rogers article, In Need of a Guarantee, substantiates the con-
cerns of many of those who work in schools that provision for the arts is
deteriorating. Rogers develops the findings of his new report (Rogers,
1995) for the Royal Society of Arts, the Arts Council and the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation on the effects of national educational reform on
the arts in schools. In 1982, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation pub-
lished a wide ranging analysis of the arts in compulsory education, The
Arts in Schools: Principles, Practice and Provision (Robinson, 1982). The
report argues that the arts have vital roles in the general education of all
children and young people: roles whose importance is increasing in the
context of rapidly changing social, economic and cultural circumstances.
In 1988, the Education Reform Act (ERA) introduced fundamental
changes in the content, management and resourcing of state education.
The four pillars of the act were: the National Curriculum, which specifies
the content and standards of education; local management of schools
(LMS), which devolves over 80 per cent of local education authority
funding to school governing bodies; opting out, which provides for indi-
vidual schools to apply for direct funding from central government; and
parental choice, allowing parents selection among state schools.
The National Curriculum comprises three core subjects - English,
mathematics and science; and seven foundation subjects - history, geog-
raphy, technology, modern languages, art, music and physical education.
Schools have complained since 1988 that the National Curriculum was
too complex and too demanding. In 1994, Sir Ron Dearing published his
review for the government of the National Curriculum (Dearing, 1994).
The Dearing Review reduced the statutory requirements of the National
Curriculum in general and simplified the statements of content and
attainment. While confirming the centrality of the core subjects, the
Review further reduced the status of the arts.
Rick Rogers documents the impact of the legislation since 1988 on the
arts in schools. He concludes that the quality and extent of arts educa-
tion has been significantly affected, and that the local advisory and sup-

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port services that are needed to develop the arts in education have been
seriously reduced. His article concludes by outlining a concept of entitle-
ment to arts education for all children and young people, and the actions
that are needed to promote it. The remaining papers in this collection
focus on how the arts can contribute to three priority areas of work with
children and young people.

The arts in practice

In A Real Chance for the Arts, Lizzie Perring describes the programmes
and principles of the Bridge Arts Education Centre in Rugby. Childrens
rejection of education, and the associated issues of social exclusion and
delinquency, are issues of increasing concern not only to educators but to
the many other social services agencies that become involved. The Bridge
was established experimentally to develop forms of education that would
engage young people whose emotional and behavioural difficulties place
them beyond the reach of mainstream schools. The Centres work is of
particular interest because it is based primarily in the arts, and makes
extensive use of professional artists, not only in teaching but in the
design of the programmes it provides. The Centre sees the development
of new self-images and of self-esteem at the heart of its work and of work
in the arts a t the centre of that process.
For over ten years, Phil Ellis has been pioneering the uses of new
music technology in the education of children with special educational
needs. In Developing Abilities in Children with Special Needs: A New
Approach, he outlines the background to this approach and its most
recent applications with children with a wide range of learning difficul-
ties. In 1984, the Carnegie Trust published the report of an inquiry
chaired by Sir Richard Attenborough on T h e Arts and Disabled People
(Attenborough, 1984). The report argues against the identification of
individuals only in terms of their specific disabilities and emphasises the
need for a wider conception of ability. Dominant forms of social interac-
tion and of socialisation, including education, emphasise verbal ability in
speech and in writing. Children who have physical or psychological diffi-
culties with language can suffer many consequent difficulties.
Attenborough argued that the arts can offer many different modes of
communication and expression and that these can release intellectual
and other abilities in young people that are otherwise undetected. The
arts can provide unique routes to self-realisation and in doing so con-
tribute to an enhanced conception of human ability. Phil Elliss research
provides significant evidence of this argument. Through a series of
vignettes and short case studies he describes the liberating effects for

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children with severe learning difficulties of the expressive qualities of

sound. Central to his research, and to his wider thesis, are the dynamic
relationships of the arts, human expressiveness and technology.
The central aims of the National Curriculum are to promote the spiri-
tual, moral and cultural development of pupils a t school and of society.
It is a profound irony that the ERA failed to recognise the fundamental
roles of the arts in fulfilling these aims. As Rick Rogers shows, provision
for the arts has declined with the implementation of the Act. Yet the arts
are deeply enmeshed in issues of value and in particular with cultural
values and identity. In the final article Joe Winston provides a vivid
example of these relationships. I n Careful The Tale You Tell, Winston
discusses two key themes: first, the roles of traditional stories - including
fairy tales - in the articulation and transmission of cultural values;
second, the ways in which drama can be used in schools to explore these
value systems within moral and cultural education. Drama and literature
have especially significant roles in these areas because of their inherent
concern with the nature and context of human actions. Implicitly and
explicitly these articles illustrate a number of key themes in current
work in the arts with children and young people.

What are the arts?

Art is a famously difficult concept. Conceptions of the arts vary widely
from one culture to another, and have varied through history. One reason
is the constant interaction between art and technology. Artists use tools.
New tools may quickly give rise to new forms of artistic practice. Just as
the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century was facilitated by the
development of printing, the invention of lens-based technologies, and of
moving images, has given rise to the dominant art forms of the twentieth
century. New media make possible new forms of artistic practice: they
also generate new audiences. The interaction of technology and human
expressiveness is an underlying theme of Phil Elliss article as is the
huge, and as yet unrealised, potential of information technologies for
expanding existing arts practices.
In public policy terms, the arts are sometimes associated with leisure
and recreation. There is much to be said about the importance of leisure,
and about the recreative functions of the arts. Nonetheless, in this gen-
eral association of arts and leisure lies a suggestion that the arts are not
fundamentally serious: desirable and enjoyable, but not essential. This
suggestion partly arises from the implied contrast between work and
leisure: work as necessary and productive, leisure as enjoyable and
relaxing. The articles in this issue illustrate that the arts are both neces-

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sary and enjoyable, productive and and renewing. But what are the arts?
Harland and Kinders article takes an expansive view. The definition of
the arts used in their survey includes:

...but is not restricted to such high art as opera, theatre, dance, painting,
sculpture, literature, film, music, as well as the informal common cultural
activities such as scratching and dubbing, graffiti, style and fashion, as
depicted by Willis (1990). It also allows for contemporary as well as tradi-
tional practice within each art form (e.g. hip-hop and rock bands as well as
classical music and jazz). The definition also includes artistic and cultural
variations both within and beyond the Western European tradition. (See
page 72.)

In 1990, Paul Willis published an analysis for the Gulbenkian

Foundation of provision for the arts for young people outside the formal
structures of education. Willis survey looked at all areas of young
peoples cultural activities through interviews, questionnaires, and
through other available surveys and statistics. The study argued that
conventional conceptions of the arts too often lead to the view that the
lives of young people are aesthetically impoverished. Willis argues that it
is the dominant perceptions of art that are impoverished. In reality, he
argues, the lives and preoccupations of young people are deeply affected
by aesthetic and creative impulses: that institutional definitions of art
should give way to a recognition of grounded aesthetics - in fashion,
music, visual imagery, dance and the many other popular forms through
which young people form and assert their sense of identity.

The arts and the social culture

A distinction is commonly made between high art - especially opera,
ballet, fine art, serious music, literature and theatre - and popular cul-
ture, including film, television, video, fashion, commercial music and
publishing. Although there are important distinctions to be made within
the arts, this general distinction can be misleading. Harland and Kinder
emphasise the pervasiveness of aesthetics and creative processes in all
areas of cultural life. This argument also underpins the Gulbenkian
Foundations earlier report, The Arts in Schools (Robinson, 1982). This
argument also suggests that the common distinction between high art
and popular culture should be treated with caution, especially as it
applies to children and young people.
First, this distinction tends to suggest that the arts and popular cul-
ture are separate and discrete. The reality is much more complex. In
practice, there is a dynamic interaction between these as between all

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areas of the social culture. The character of a cultural community is

expressed through its many constituent ways of life, or sub-systems: eco-
nomic, moral, religious, judicial, technological, familial, aesthetic and so
on. Raymond Williams (1961) has shown that the experience, and the
study, of a social culture is not of each of its sub-processes in isolation so
much as of the constant interaction and mutual redefinitions between
them. Technological processes are interwoven with economic systems,
and these bear on systems of work and of personal relationships. Moral
values interact with all of these processes, and so on. Equally, the work of
artists arises out of their experience within the social culture: the work
they generate then comes to participate, through the responses of others,
in how the culture is reshaped and defined.
The arts are ways in which individuals formulate and articulate the
meaning of their experiences, both as individuals and as individuals
within many different cultural groupings. Consequently, the subject
matter of art is as varied and complex as human experience itself. So too
are the interactions between different areas of cultural activity. These
are central themes in Joe Winstons discussion of the relationships
between social values, narrative traditions and the uses of drama in
moral education. Using drama to examine the social values implicit in
traditional stories is a powerful way of engaging young people in explo-
rations of contemporary morality.
A second difficulty with the high artlpopular culture distinction is the
common conception of popular culture as passive consumerism; a top-
down process driven by a rapacious commercialism which preys particu-
larly on young people. I n this context, the high arts may be seen as a
kind of antidote to cultural anaesthesia in the young - difficult to
swallow, like most medicines, but good for children nonetheless. In prac-
tice, the relations between cultural production and consumption are also
much more complex than this.
In 1988, the Policy Studies Institute published the findings of a
national research project on The Economic Importance of the Arts in
Britain (Myerscough, 1988). The report analysed the economic profile
and impact of the cultural industries. These include not only the arts,
as conventionally defined, but the wider processes and systems of pro-
duction and distribution in television, film, video, music, book and maga-
zine production, fashion and style. The report estimated that this sector
contributed over ten billion pounds to GNP in the period under review.
Since its publication, the methodology and some of the accounting proce-
dures of this inquiry have been contested. All analysts do agree that
there is a significant economic dimension of the cultural sector: a theme
that has been developed in a series of subsequent economic analyses of
the arts in different city and national contexts.

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In all sectors of the cultural industries there is a sensitive and dynamic

relationship between production and consumption, supply and demand.
In the fashion industry, for example, changing styles and aesthetics are
not simply determined top down by producers to consumers. Fashions
evolve partly by designers sensing changing social moods and sensibili-
ties and by their own participation in more general movements in taste.
Young people in particular often initiate style changes which are then
absorbed, interpreted and recycled by designers. Fashion interacts with
changes in music and in the visual environment, and vice versa. Nor is
fashion monolithic. As with music and all industries, there is a multi-
plicity of large scale, small and idiosyncratic operations, all catering to
and responding to different style communities. The members of these
communities affect and feed off each other. Young people also tend to
modify and individualise cultural products, in clothes and style especially.
Of course there are powerful, sometimes cynical commercial forces in the
marketing of cultural products. But here, as elsewhere, the development
of cultural products is dialectical rather than unilinear. These dynamics
illustrate the central point, that aesthetic and creative processes are per-
vasive and defining dimensions of human communities. The reason for
this ubiquity is that the impulse for aesthetic and creative expression is
inherent to human intelligence.

The arts and human intelligence

Lizzie Perring argues that the arts are powerful ways of engaging young
people who have become alienated from mainstream education. She
points to a growth in motivation for learning and in self-esteem.
Although the Bridge Centre is dealing with young people in extreme cir-
cumstances, the work indicates principles that are relevant to the gen-
eral education of all children and young people. For the most part
conventional systems of education continue to be dominated by verbal
and mathematical reasoning. Dominant conceptions of intelligence and
of educability are based on these processes. They are important
processes, and childrens capacities for them should be developed as fully
as possible. The problem in education and for children is that these intel-
lectual abilities in particular are too often mistaken for intelligence in
general.
An increasingly significant theme within the cognitive sciences is that
human intelligence is multifaceted (see, for example, Donald, 1991, and
Gardner, 1983). Following the publication of The Arts in Schools report
(Robinson, 1982), a major national curriculum development project was
initiated in 1985 by the then School Curriculum Development

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Committee, later the National Curriculum Council. The aim of the Arts
in Schools Project was to give practical support to the development of the
arts in primary and secondary education. The reports of the Project
(Robinson, 1990) drawing from such research, argued that the arts arises
from at least the following modes of understanding:
- the visual mode - using light, colour and shape
- the aural mode - using sounds and rhythms
- the kinaesthetic mode - using movement and space
- the verbal mode - using words
- the enactive mode - using imagined roles.

Similarly, research into the physiology of the brain argues for a differ-
entiated model of human intelligence (see, for example, Edwards, 1993).
Crucially, such research emphasises the complementarity of these dif-
ferent modes of understanding. Carl Sagan (1971) makes this point in
discussing research into the apparently differentiated functions of the
right and left cerebral hemispheres of the brain. The research suggests
that the left hemisphere is largely involved in sequential, linear
processes of reason, whereas the right hemisphere is more typically
involved in, for example, orientation in space, recognition of faces and
wholistic perception. Western culture has largely favoured the functions
of the left hemisphere. The appropriate response now, argues Sagan, is
not to abandon left hemisphere functions in favour of the right hemi-
sphere:

There is no way to tell whether the patterns expected by the right hemi-
sphere are real or imagined without subjecting them to left hemisphere
scrutiny. On the other hand, mere critical thinking without creative and
imaginative insights and the search for new patterns, is sterile and
doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the
activity of both cerebral hemispheres. The path to the future lies through
the corpus callosum. (Sagan, 1971)

These new and emergent models of the mind have far-reaching impli-
cations for work with children and young people. They argue for
approaches to education that recognise the diversity and the essential
wholeness of each individuals intellectual capacities. Childrens capabili-
ties are much richer and more complex than verbal and mathematical
reasoning alone. Education systems like our own that are almost exclu-
sively preoccupied with these abilities fail to develop whole areas of all
childrens natural capacities. As a result, most children leave school

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unfulfilled by the experience. But all childrens abilities are not the
same. For those whose best abilities are not verbal or mathematical, edu-
cation can be a deeply demeaning and frustrating experience.
Many young people literally have no idea of what they are capable of
as a result, they may never know who they really are. It may be partly
for this reason that many adults look back on their education with mixed
feelings, and too often with a sense of failure. The task of education is to
develop the general abilities of all children and to help identify the par-
ticular strengths of each of them. Science, language and mathematics are
essential to this process. So too are the modes of intelligence that give
rise to the arts.

Conclusion
For all of these reasons, it is increasingly important that education and
other areas of social provision for children and young people recognise
the roles and importance of the arts in personal and social development.
Taken together these articles indicate why young people value the arts,
and some of the ways in which they can be provided for. They also illus-
trate the extent to which these messages have yet to be fully understood
a t the heart of policy-making for children and of society.

References
Attenborough, R (1984) The Arts and Disabled People. Bedford Square
Press
Dearing, R (1994) T h e National Curriculum. School Curriculum and
Assessment Authority
Donald, M (1991) T h e Origins of the Modern Mind. Harvard University
Press
Edwards, B (1993) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Harper
Collins
Gardner, H (1983)Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.
New York: Basic Books
Hargreaves, D H (1983) Doctor Brunel and Mr Dunning: Reflections On
Aesthetic Knowing i n Ross, M ed. (1983) The Arts As A Way Of
Knowing. Pergamon Press
Myerscough, J (1989) The Economic Importance of the Arts i n Britain.
Policy Studies Institute
Robinson, K (1982) The Arts i n Schools: Principles, Practice and
Prouision. Calouste Gulbenhan Foundation
Robinson, K (1990) The Arts 5-1 6: A Curriculum Framework. Oliver and
Boyd, Longman
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Ken Robinson

Rogers, R (1995) Guaranteeing an Entitlement to the Arts in Schools.

Royal Society of Arts
Sagan, C (1971) The Dragons of Eden. Hodder and Stoughton
Williams, R (1961) The Long Revolution. Penguin
Willis, P (1990)Moving Culture. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

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