STAR-POST (Art) January 2019 Jan. 2019

Culture of Intersections: Sharing by our

At 91 pages, STAR-Post: Arts Education Conference: Intersections and Transformation is a bumper issue! More than two-thirds of this issue is dedicated to the ideas, learning and exchange at the 2018 Arts Education Conference (AEC). It is my hope that by revisiting the intersectional ideas and forward-looking perspectives presented by thought-leaders, artists and peers at the one-day conference, you will be reminded to explore connections and see possibilities in the teaching and learning of art.

The weeks leading up to AEC and throughout the conference day, we asked participants to explore the following key questions:

• How might arts intersections catalyse creativity and innovation?

• How might quality arts and cultural experiences shape and transform individuals and the community?

• How might these ideas transform the way we teach and open up new possibilities?

• How might these ideas influence the way we build a better future?

Let’s strive to answer these pertinent questions in the new year. The myriad responses generated by individual educators and as a collective fraternity will certainly inform and transform the work we do in our art classrooms now and in the future.

Enjoy the read. We look forward to learning with you and from you in 2019.

Ms Seow Ai Wee Deputy Director (Art), STAR

Transforming Paradigm: Arts Education Conference (AEC) 2018

Arts Education Conference (AEC) 2018 brought together about 1000 Art, Music, Drama and Dance teachers for the exchange of creative ideas and sharing of insights in Arts education.

The conference theme Arts for the Future: Intersections and Transformation opened a space for us to examine creativity in the Arts and the potential of the Arts to facilitate engagement, innovation, and optimism for the future.

“Your happiness is at the intersection of your passions and learning from great people.”

- Scott Weiss

Highlights of Opening Remarks by Second Minister For Education, Ms.

Indranee Rajah, at the Arts Education Conference 2018

DEVELOPING SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS

“ Arts education is not just about recalling facts of artists or performances. The focus has shifted from skills and knowledge acquisition to a more process-oriented, inquirybased approach to learning that allows the students’ voice to be heard.”

“Students are given time and space to investigate and play; to make sense of the sounds, gestures, visual expressions, and images around them. By engaging in discussions about artists’ inspirations, performers’ interpretations and audiences’ receptions, they learn to value different perspectives, appreciate diversity and respect for others.”

FOSTERING A SENSE OF BELONGING

“The world we live in is rapidly changing. Globalisation, social and cultural shifts, and the changing demographics in Singapore can all have unsettling effects. People look for something to hold fast to. It prompts us to ask, “What anchors us as Singaporeans?” “How can we imbue in students a sense of identity and rootedness?”, and “What are the shared values and traditions that bind generations of Singaporeans?

Each generation sees themselves in a particular way, and of course, each generation thinks that the next generation has sort of ruined something. But each generation has its own sense of identity.”

CONNECTIONS ACROSS DISCIPLINES

“The world we live in does not exist in clear compartmentalised segments. Similarly, the learning of subjects should cut across multiple disciplines. We will gift to our students a lifelong legacy, especially when the student is able to see the connections among subjects and between disciplines, and make meaning of the world around him/her.

We must provide more opportunities for learning that cuts across disciplines, stimulates students’ creativity, and develop their ability to problem-solve in different contexts.”

NETWORKS AND PARTNERSHIPS

“The partnerships with our art museums as well as with arts organisations expand students’ repertoire of arts experiences; they are nurtured both as artists as well as an audience. For the arts fraternity, such professional exchange, networks and partnerships, builds professional capital that enrich teaching and learning.”

NURTURING TALENT, EXPANDING PATHWAYS

“It is important that every student is given the opportunity to discover and develop his or her interests and strengths, and be supported in making more informed choices about their future career pathways.”

ROLE OF ARTS EDUCATION AS THE CATALYST FOR CHANGE

“We believe in the power of the arts to move beyond the aesthetics into work that enables individuals and communities to effect change, whether in attitude or in action.

RECOGNISING OUR ARTS EDUCATORS

“Arts educators play a critical role in the pursuit for excellence through multiple pathways. They shape and advocate for students’ development in different ways.

“I strongly encourage everyone in this room to create your own stories of success and share them so that others may learn and be inspired.”

I encourage you to continue to tap on the transformative power of the arts, to influence and impact students’ lives. Arts education plays a part in nurturing the whole child. It continues to be a pivotal platform for students to cultivate a sense of curiosity, discover their interests and talents, grow their passions, and develop life skills, and a love for life-long learning.

A critical dimension of your teacher leadership is to champion and shape how learning in the arts can impact and influence communities locally and globally. For the shift to succeed, we will need to work together as a community, with our stakeholders and partners.” Read full speech by Second Minister for Education HERE.

“Portraits III: Narratives of Singapore Arts Educators” was launched at AEC 2018.

I t was only a few weeks ago that the Minister for Education announced there would be fewer examinations. The interesting question is: if we have fewer examinations, what are we going to get more of?

One answer is, hopefully, more of the joy of learning. Rather than go into a discussion on what “joy” means, I would rather ask, what should students learn more?

Obviously the learning has to be about what would be useful for the students in the future.

So, what would be useful for the students?

Success for a VUCA World

I am sure that most of you are familiar with the term “the VUCA world.” It is a world that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

While the future has always been volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, it has become increasingly so over the past decade with the progress of technology, and the rise of the digital age and globalisation. Geopolitics today is possibly the most volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous factor of all.

Growing Beyond Talent Keynote Address

by Mr. Lim Siong Guan, Founding Chairman, Honour (Singapore) Limited

‘VUCA” is a term that could make us feel we know what we are talking about. But perhaps it would be much nearer to the truth if we acknowledge instead that we know the future is about a VUCA world, which means we don’t know what is the future we are talking about.

Futurist Gerd Leonhard delivered a keynote at a KPMG Robotic Innovations event in 2015, titled: “The Digital Transformation of Business and Society: Challenges and Opportunities by 2020”.

Leonhard opined that we are at a point in history where humanity will change more in the next twenty years than in the previous 300 years. There is thus an urgent need to look into the future and prepare for it— it is important to shift from a focus on “what is”, to a focus on “what could be”; a “wait and see” attitude translates into a “wait and die” result, as the question is no longer “what if ”, but “what when”.

Anything that can be automated will be automated. The acceleration of automation has ethical implications… but technology does not have ethics. Technology can thus take two paths that Leonard terms as “Hellven”, meaning a situation where the technology can be “heaven” (where technology is used to increase the well-being of people) or “hell” (where technology brings about bad unintended consequences).

Leonhard also made the point that while technology has progressed explosively,

humanity has only progressed linearly. Whether this new world is heaven or hell depends on whether humanity is honoured and whether humanity has honour.

Leonhard also opined that the exponential and intersecting growth of “Digitalisation, De-Materialisation, Automation, Virtualisation, Optimisation, Augmentation, and Robotisation” will result in interdependency, job displacement, and abundance that comes about due to dramatic cost reduction.

In a world of abundance, there is too much to use. But while there is a physical manifestation of abundance outside, there is a spiritual, emotional, and mental scarcity inside, which sparks individuals to search for what they feel they lack, namely:

• Trust

• Experience

• Purpose

In addition, algorithms can only go so far.

In accordance with the economic laws of demand and supply, as digitalisation increases, anything that cannot be made digital will become more valuable – this means that people will seek more creativity (which is great for the arts industry and all of you here!) intuition, love, trust, understanding, amongst other values.

Honour in the experience economy

In the world of automation and abundance, experience will become extremely valuable. Hence, creativity,

innovation, social intelligence, and customer focus will be very important for businesses, and people will need to develop skills in creative problemsolving and constructive interaction if they still want to be employed.

In the world of big data, the value of the business will be contingent on the human and non-digitalisable aspects of a purpose-driven company, namely:

• Purpose

• Design

• Brand What this means is that organisations, communities and countries must not only excel at technology, but also at humanity.

What this means is that all of you – all of us – have a very important role to play in preparing your students and our children for that future.

In a nutshell, to survive and succeed in the future:

• We must honour our humanity.

• Organisations, communities, and countries must dare to think differently and innovate to create new value that cannot be easily automated.

• We need stronger values, ethics, standards, principles, and social contracts.

• We need honour to honour these stronger values, ethics, standards, principles, and social contracts to avoid hellish outcomes.

Challenges in the VUCA world

In the VUCA world, there are three key challenges:

• Challenge #1: The Need for Clear and Strong Leadership

• Challenge #2: The Need for Individuals to Think for Themselves, not of Themselves

• Challenge #3: The Rise of Relativism

Challenge #1: The Need for Clear and Strong Leadership

Leaders are human, and humans like to be popular. Leaders, whether it be of nations or companies or any organisation, need to be aware of the wishes and desires of their people, but more importantly, they have to judge what would be good for the people, the organisation, the company, or the nation for the years to come.

Leaders must have the moral courage to do the right thing, regardless of what others are doing, even if it costs them their popularity.

Leaders have to be clear about what kind of organisation, community and nation they want to leave for the next generation to inherit, and what kinds of values the next generation will need to ensure the continued success and survival for the organisation, community and/or nation.

Leaders cannot avoid making moral judgments as to what would be good for the people because they have to “create the future”. They cannot simply follow what people want today.

Challenge #2: The Need for Individuals to Think for Themselves, not of Themselves

On the lack of thinking, this has become more serious with the advent of the internet. In the age of the internet, information is so easily searchable that people do not need to think for themselves. They simply look for the

website or blog that offers information and opinions that they find agreeable.

But in such convenience lies the danger of not bothering to think.

If we are to be responsible members of society, each one of us must think for ourselves as to what would be good for the generations to come.

In the age of the selfie and the internet, the desire for more public recognition and admiration leads one to take deceptive and self-destructive paths— news, photos, and posts are tweaked, comments are taken out of context, and so on.

In a world of instant gratification, few individuals pause to verify the facts and the research; many simply go along with people’s opinions, which oftentimes are based on rumour, whims, guesses and/ or untruths.

When important decisions that can affect the future are being made, people have to think for themselves what is good for not only this generation, but also for future generations. People should not make decisions based upon what is easy and convenient, but on what is right and good.

Challenge #3: The Rise of Relativism

The rise of relativism has resulted in a situation where concepts of right and wrong, good and bad are not anchored to the absolutes, such as those found in the wisdom of religion or ancient cultures, but are based simply on what is convenient or what is popular.

Relativism is when people take short cuts and tell lies but do not feel bad or ashamed about it as long as someone else cheats more or lies more.

The stability of societies lie in trust and a presumed standard of goodness and rightness.

Trust is the currency for all long term relationships, and honour is the foundation of trust.

Honour O.T.T.L.L.S.S. to survive and thrive in the VUCA world

But how does one best prepare oneself to deal with these three challenges in a world that is increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA)?

In a VUCA world, the best preparation would not be rules and processes, but values. In a fast-changing world, there are no “maps” because no one has gone that way before; when there are no “maps”, we need a good “compass”.

The “compass” comprises the values and beliefs we hold to be important for our lives. So the best preparation we can make in the VUCA world is valuesbased.

In a VUCA world, we need to:

• Honour a “life compass” based on absolute values and principles

• Develop self-confidence and sound judgment

• Have the courage to be different

from others

• Adopt a realistic view of people

• Nurture a capacity to build relationships

We can survive and thrive in the VUCA world by learning to honour O.T.T.L.L.S.S., which stands for:

• Observe

• Think

• Try

• Learn

• Lead

• Stand

• Serve The future is one in which the unseen becomes much more important than the seen. Hence, it is important for us to address the scarcity on the inside, and not focus on the abundance on the outside.

In such a world, the best thing we can do with our students is to make sure they have a good foundation of the fundamentals in terms of language, Science and Mathematics, so they have the basic elements for learning, communicating and understanding

as the world unfolds, but even more critically, we have to develop a strong moral compass and cultivate positive attitudes within them to empower them to navigate the unknown, the uncertain, the unpredictable, the “don’t know what”, and empower them to lead purpose filled lives that can make a positive difference in their families, communities, organisations, and the nation.

What they need are the attributes like

• honour to live by the virtues

• courage to try the new and the unfamiliar,

• self-confidence to deal with the unknown and the unexpected,

• humility to learn and to acknowledge difficulty and failure,

• integrity and trustworthiness to be able to work with and relate to others, and a capacity for leading and communication as they make their way into the future with a spirit of innovation, creativity and discovery backed by tenacity and determination.

But there is a huge problem here, because the qualities of courage, self-confidence, humility, integrity, trustworthiness, and so on, cannot be learnt from lectures and the black (or white) board, but has to be developed in

the course of “learning by doing.” They are the products of experience and not of hearing or seeing.

As teachers, you can decide either that these qualities have to be developed by “someone else,” or you can decide to address the question, “What different ways must I adopt to develop these future competencies in my students, ways that are different from traditional classroom teaching which will be more effective in developing competencies, which have to do with character and living?”

How can we learn to see things and think things and feel things differently, in order to discover and create these new ways for building the young up for a future of satisfaction and creativity?

Thinking Different

As an example of how we should be perceiving things differently, I know someone who is a professor of music in a university in Hong Kong who told me that it is actually not such a good idea for children to start learning music on the piano because the piano is a very individual-centric musical instrument. He would strongly recommend that children start with the violin, or even the recorder, because while these instruments do require the individual skills of playing them, they are primarily instruments to be played in an orchestra or group.

Students of these instruments will thus learn the need to work with others, to be sensitive to what others are doing and blend in, and to recognise that the beauty of what they do lies in harmony and teamwork rather than their individual self.

So to music teachers, you should be recognising the importance of what you are doing to not just be about the capacity to recognise and read musical notes or play instruments proficiently, but as your contribution to their lives

in building up their capacity to work with others, to think about others, and honour others in daily interaction.

An advantage you all have as art and music teachers is that you are already further along in preparing your students for their future than you may have realised.

You are helping them develop: courage to try the new and the unfamiliar, selfconfidence to be themselves and to deal with the unknown and the unexpected, humility to learn and to acknowledge difficulty and failure, integrity and trustworthiness to be able to work with and relate to others, and a capacity for leading and communication as they make their way into the future with a spirit of innovation, creativity and discovery backed up by tenacity and determination, honour and purposefulness.

These qualities for success in work and life go beyond the skills and techniques to produce works of art and deliver works of music. They are the values and attributes that would give them the keys for success in a VUCA world. You may not have been aware of these keys in your possession.

Now that you know, I hope that you would henceforth conduct your daily lessons with new enlightenment and new motivation.

Honour Talent

One argument that has frequently been put forward is that you are principally in the business of developing talent, at least talents in fields of art and music.

What you do here, to some extent, depends on whether you consider the talent to be a matter of nature or nurture. Contrary to what many people may think, the challenge is greater for teachers who believe that talent is a matter of nature.

If you believe that talent is about nurture, you would be thinking of good and clever ways for teaching, and hopefully you would have developed ways to motivate your students to learn and to practise not just the techniques and skills of art and music, but the deeper things of life and living.

We all know the story of The Animal School, written by George Reavis when he was the Assistant Superintendent of the Cincinnati Public Schools back in the 1940s. The story goes as follows:

“Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world”, so they organised a school. They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

“The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay back after school and also drop swimming in order to practise running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

“The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of the extra remedial work he needed to do in swimming.

“The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a ‘charley horse’ – a muscle spasm –from overexertion, and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

“The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing

class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.

“At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceedingly well and also run, climb, and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.”

The important point of this story, to me, is that even the process of nurture requires differentiation in instruction depending on the natural skills and learning styles students are differently endowed with, without yet considering issues of innate talent.

What then about those of you who believe that talent is a matter of nature rather than nurture? For you there is the extra task of being able to spot talent as early as possible, and of being able to develop that talent the best way possible. So you have to start earlier than the teachers who believe in nurture, and you have to complete your task to a higher standard than the teachers who believe in nurture.

But whether you believe in nature or nurture, the most important thing you have to espouse as a teacher is to recognise that each student is different and to honour these differences.

Talent needs to be uncovered, developed, expressed and put to good use. Talent does not simply manifest itself. It needs to be discovered as a joint effort between the teacher and the student.

For the student to discover what is the best they can be is to get them to continually knock on the doors of their minds and their hearts in a continuous quest to find the talent that lurks within them.

They should never limit themselves by excusing themselves from whatever they won’t do or can’t do today, by simply saying, “I don’t have the talent for it.”

And the teacher should never allow them to get away with this. To grow is to go beyond being limited by the talents they already know about.

Growing beyond talent requires motivation to discover more of themselves, hard work to cultivate what they uncover, courage to display their talent, and a good heart to produce benefit from it all.

We need to honour the talents and abilities that we each have by applying them to good purpose. And in so doing, we discover our humanity in contributing to, and enriching, the lives of those around us and those whose paths we cross each day. As it is for us, so it must be for our students.

May we, each day, be more than we were the day before, and less than we would be the day after, because we have decided to not be satisfied if we were not the best that we could be, with what is special to each of us. We must all constantly push ourselves to grow beyond our talent, and you, the teachers, need to get your students there also.

Conclusion Let me summarise.

The VUCA world means our students need the ability to deal with the uncertain and with continuous change.

In a VUCA world, the best preparation is not about rules and processes, but values. In a fast-changing world, there are no “maps” because no one has gone that way before; when there are no “maps”, we need a good “compass”.

The “compass” comprises the values and beliefs we hold to be important for our lives. So the best preparation we can make in the VUCA world is valuesbased.

As art and music teachers, you are actually in a unique situation to help

develop these qualities.

But there is a second aspect special to you. The nature of art and music is that you are dealing with talent and potential. Talent needs to be uncovered, developed, expressed and put to good use.

What is most important for you as teachers is to recognise that your students have different talents and abilities, and to honour these differences. Do this with a conviction that it is even more important than the teaching of skills and techniques, for you are developing attitudes for life and work which position your students best for sustainable success in their years to come.

The process of doing this produces life attitudes useful for a VUCA world, because:

Talent not uncovered is missed. Talent not developed is wasted. Talent not expressed is unused. Talent not put to good use is squandered.

Success is never certain and the path is not predefined. If you are simply following others, you can use their maps and their tools, but your possibilities are then limited by what they have done in circumstances that will never be the same as yours. And you will always be behind and late, though hopefully not too late.

O.T.T.L.L.S.S.

Teach your students to reach out for the opportunity to do good by following the steps: Observe, Think, Try, Learn, Lead, Stand, and Serve.

Everyone can be a leader by following these steps — everyone, including children, teenagers, youths, and seniors, wherever they may be.

The world craves leaders who seek to serve the good of the many. The world needs people who think for themselves, not of themselves. The world awaits leaders who have their own convictions of good and bad, right and wrong, and who are not content to follow the crowd in the wrong direction.

For your students to survive and thrive in the world to come, you have to help them develop: courage to try the new and the unfamiliar, self-confidence to be themselves and to deal with the unknown and the unexpected, humility to learn and to acknowledge difficulty and failure, integrity and trustworthiness to be able to work with and relate to others, and a capacity for leading and communication as they make their way into the future with a spirit of innovation, creativity and discovery backed up by tenacity and determination, honour and purposefulness. As I have described, as arts educators, you actually already have a headstart in this.

While we can refer to what has been done by those who have gone before us, what we need is a compass of values, principles, and beliefs of what can and should be. We also need energy and stamina to keep going despite detractors and distractions.

Honouring others is what will give you the power and energy to stand apart, stand tall, and stand to serve others within your family, your school, your workplace, your society, and your country.

I wish each of you all the very best as you seek to honour the talents and abilities of your many and varied students, and to continually be focused on what they need most for a good, satisfying and successful future.

Thank you.

View keynote address by Mr. Lim Siong Guan HERE

Ms. Low Sok Hui

Senior Academy Officer (Art), STAR

Mr. Hirokazu Kobayashi and Ms. Haruna Yamada are the creative unit behind SPREAD, a graphic design firm based in Tokyo, Japan. They are both artists as well as designers and they specialise in creating artworks with the use of colours.

Three Thoughts on Life Stripe –A Pattern of Life

Keynote Address by Mr. Hirokazu Kobayashi and Ms. Haruna Yamada (SPREAD Design Duo)

TLife Stripe -- In search of the tempo of life

he mundane does not need to be dull. SPREAD Design Duo find patterns in the everyday life of individuals. It is in everyday routines where the 24 hours are recorded and colour coded according to the different activities, such as eating and grooming. Their process is similar to a research project, where they do interviews or surveys. The respondents have the choice to select which day of their life they would like to share. This process in turn helps the respondent to memorise or recall a day they had in the past. This concept forms the basis for Life Stripe –abstract artworks created through the use of stripes or patterns of colours. Additionally, the works are meant to be read across from left to right, symbolizing the flow of time chronologically. The audience is then invited to imagine and empathise with the feelings associated with the various colours.

Think about:

How could we get our students to work on an individual or a collective memory project that is meaningful to them?

The power of colours to connect and heal

Life is beautiful and that beauty can be communicated through colours. Colours have the power to influence and play an important role in our lives. Colours affect us emotionally and are perceived differently by people from different cultures and different generations. Colours can also generate conversations.

The impetus for Life Stripe by SPREAD Design Duo started mainly to help a friend who was suffering from society withdrawal and who was reluctant to communicate. The activity of using colours to describe the day’s activity helped their friend to regain confidence in expression. They also worked on a similar project for the Japanese children traumatised by the 2011 earthquake. The process of working with colours brought joy to the children and the sharing of their experiences and fears brought them closer as a community.

Think about:

How could we lead meaningful conversations or introduce tasks about colours in our classrooms?

Hands-on learning

In this digital age, our younger generation may not have much hands-on learning opportunities. When SPREAD Design Duo introduced their favourite material – washi tape to children, they found the process of cutting, tearing, pasting and peeling interesting and stimulating. The tape is also a versatile medium that allows children to experiment and learn from their mistakes.

The opportunity to put things together, create narratives and to use both familiar and/or unfamiliar materials in new ways helped them to construct meaning in learning.

Think about:

How could we design hands-on learning experiences to spur students’ curiosity and creativity?

View keynote address by SPREAD Design Duo HERE.

After notes from AEC 2018 Art Panel Discussion: “Finding Intersections in

Life and Art."

Mr. Lim Kok Boon, Master Teacher (Art), STAR Moderator of the panel discussion

“Intersections” is perhaps a more liberating way of considering contemporary practises. It might be a way of looking at and thinking about things, as opposed to believing that something can only be made and appreciated in one way. The Art Panel Discussion brought a sound artist, an installation artist and a designer to share their personal stories and what “intersections” meant to them.

I

f I could sum up the stories and advice from the Art panel, it might read as:

• Discover interests and learn deeply about them;

• Find connections with people or concepts from different fields;

• Embrace opportunities and take sensible risks;

• Repeat.

Discover interests and learn deeply about them. Zulkifle Mahmod became interested in sound art and started dissecting toys to study simple electronic circuitry before he made his first sound-based assemblages and installations. Donna Ong traced the history of printed flora illustrations after chancing upon a book that caught her eye. Edwin began interested in Japanese artisan, and he made trips to Japan to visit the workshops of craftspeople to see the making process first hand.

Find connections with people or concepts from different fields.

Zulkifle’s fascination with sound art brought him to art residencies where he could sample new sound, and to learn the art form from other artists. Donna collaborated with other musicians and electroacoustic composers to create immersive sound environments in several of her installations. Edwin worked with other Singapore designers to tap on their interpretations of a Singapore icon to create prized porcelain ware, aptly launched in 2015 as a Singapore golden jubilee collectible. Taking those ideas to a new place (like for example, an artisan workshop in Japan), they are transformed into objects that possess qualities of two different cultures, and stands out from other porcelain ware one might find in Singapore.

Embrace opportunities and take sensible risks.

Zulkifle, Donna and Edwin made an effort to seek opportunities to expand their work. Sometimes, they might not necessarily know how the exact final end product would turn out, but they trusted their artistic processes and instinct to get them somewhere. If one project didn’t work, they learnt and worked hard to make sure the next iteration was better.

Repeat.

Getting better at something requires hard work on ‘repeat’ mode!

Finding intersections successfully might require us to be knowledgeable and competent in a field, and with passion and discipline as catalysts and compasses. Listening to Zulkifle, I can’t help but wonder if the influence of his training as a sculptor gave him the confidence to design and assemble sound installations in a successful, sculpted way. One might argue that he treats his materials, sound files or copper tubes alike, in a sculptural, “additive” and “subtractive” manner. In the same way, Donna’s prior training in architecture could have allowed her to envision three-dimensional space, fuelled her obsession with intricate details and perfectly planned and drawn line drawings. Edwin’s training in Industrial Design probably allowed him to understand the production process of Japanese crafts facilities and extrapolate information to make aesthetics and business decisions when Supermama creates new designer pieces. Each of these creatives had a strong foundation of content knowledge to make an original idea come to life. Each of these creatives had shown in their own way, how their passion and discipline become catalysts and compass in their practice.

I have a hunch that helping our students become ‘innovators’ isn’t simply diving into designing interdisciplinary lesson units, or creating complex interdisciplinary project work. Neither is it about working without limits, as each of creatives had shared. They had constraints imposed by each project they worked on. There is probably no one fixed way to ‘grow’ innovators.

From this panel discussion, I hope you the reader will ponder the following questions:

• How do we need to guide our students to discover interests through art, and learn deeply about them?

• How do we help students find connections with people or concepts from different fields, to produce numerous ideas or see things differently?

• How do we guide students to embrace opportunities and take sensible risks?

• How do we foster thinking through making, rather than being stuck in writing or drawing sketches? How do we encourage artistic processes that push iterations through perseverance, persistence and elaboration?

Curiosity and the Creative Process: Re-Imagining Scientific Discovery

Professor Rebecca Kamen, Artist

“I never made a painting as a work of art, it’s all research.” Pablo Picasso

T

he creation of my artwork starts with curiosity and the process of qualitative inquiry. Through scientific research and dialogues with scientists and historians, I analyse what I am understanding, and communicate my observations and discoveries through art.

Collaborations with other artists such as dancers, poets, and musicians have also played a significant role in the development of the work providing new and dynamic ways to interpret science. Each project is multi-referential in terms of the connections it creates between various scientific fields, historical, and cultural references.

The master class presented at Arts Education 2018 Conference explored curiosity, discovery, and the creative process as a new lens for re-imagining scientific discovery. The art projects presented celebrate research as a spark for inspiration, as a journey for discovery, and a catalyst for making the invisible, visible.

The presentation began by discussing the influence and inspiration of science on the development of artwork. Some of the earlier work has been informed by scientific phenomena including the dynamics of folding, observed in the illusion of draping fabric in Italian carving, and the physics of the folding of pollen.

Meta, a series of sculptures created out of acrylic on mylar and wire, explores the idea of alteration, transposition, and transcending. Each of the sculptures in this series incorporates the concept of mapping of time and occurrence, and my longstanding fascination with the relationship of scientific and sacred motifs and writings. Many of the works have been inspired by unrelated phenomena as diverse as Incan Quipus and String Theory, creating unique, hybrid sculptural forms.

Another series of sculptures Fluid, explores my interest in nature as a mapping system of energy. Informed and inspired by both micro and macro views of the Universe as well as other scientific visualization models such as fluid mechanics and fluorescence microscopy, these acrylic on mylar sculptures, interpret and make visible, the fluid energy of matter, creating a bridge between art and science.

The main project discussed in depth was Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden informed and inspired by the periodic table of elements. Since this presentation focused on curiosity and the creative process in art and science; sharing my two-year research journey provided insight into the knowledge networking

process that was engaged in the evolution of the project. Below is a statement discussing the development of Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden:

In 2007 the Periodic Table entered into my consciousness. Memory of the Table took me back to 11th grade chemistry class, a magical room full of mysterious smells, test tubes, Bunsen burners and that rigid, gridded chart of letters and numbers hanging in the front of the room. Now decades later, this mystifying chart has re-entered my thoughts, demanding another look – but this time, through the eyes of an artist.

The genesis of this project has taken me on the most remarkable journey. Travels to India and Bhutan, as well as researching rare alchemy books at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, have informed this project in ways I could never have imagined back in high school. Powerful relationships started emerging, becoming the catalyst for exploring the Periodic Table as a bridge between art and science.

Buddhist mandalas, representing a cosmological view of the Universe, inspired the layout and the concept for an elemental garden. Because gardens have always served both functionally and metaphorically as an intersection of art and science with nature, they are sites of transformation. In these awe-inspiring places, matter changes from one state to another. Similar to the metamorphosis of an atom that becomes a new element when the number and arrangement of its parts changes, Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden transforms chemistry’s Periodic Table of letters and numbers into a garden of sculptural elements based on geometry and atomic number.

Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden provided an opportunity to create a large-scale installation exploring the Periodic Table as a three-dimensional object of beauty through sculptures inspired by the most ethereal aspect of an element – its orbital pattern. This project also celebrates the inter-connections of the Universe. Shapes created by these electron patterns are based on the same principals of Sacred Geometry that have inspired the Fibonacci spiral of the installation layout and are found in all aspects of nature.

The master class concluded with a discussion of a new collaborative project with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania. Investigating curiosity, cognition and the creative process, a data visualisation and animation shown during the presentation, revealed the dynamic process and acquisition of knowledge networks over time in relationship to the development of Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden project.

For more information of Professor Kamen’s artwork, please visit: https:// rebeccakamen.com/#1

Video links for Divining Nature: An Elemental Garden:

• LINK 1

• LINK 2

View video of Professor Kamen’s masterclass HERE.

Art and Science teachers learning and working collaboratively.

Top & bottom: Artworks created by teachers during the workshop.

Professor Kamen interacting with teacher-participants of the workshop.

Drawing Lesson Ideas from “you and me, we and us” Art Masterclass by Singaporean multidisciplinary artist -- Ezzam Rahman

Ms. Low Sok Hui Senior Academy Officer (Art), STAR

Observing the experiential session conducted by Ezzam, I noticed how the audience overcame their initial awkwardness and gamely responded to his given prompts to ‘create’, perhaps, their maiden act of performance art. Performance art is not about entertainment, but about the artist’s challenge to make connections through instincts, heightening senses and acknowledging emotions. Under Ezzam’s guidance, the audience experienced how the action of familiar gestures and simple everyday items can affect one physically and psychologically.

Try out the following exercises (introduced by Ezzam during the session) as introductory activities to learning performance art with your students. Get them to share their experiences of participating in a performative based artwork!

Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• Experience the use of body gestures and physical movement as a means of narrative communication.

• Experiment with materials and appreciate how they could be used as an extension of our body, thoughts and ideas.

Concept -- Artists build trust with their materials

Exercise 1a: Paper as a material

Duration: 5 mins

Materials: A4 paper

Instructions for students:

Take a piece of paper.

Stand with legs apart and hold the paper using your non-dominant hand.

Use just your thumb and index finger to hold the paper.

Check that your arm is straight and is parallel to ground.

Look and stare at the blank paper.

Do not make any movement.

Breathe normally.

You will feel the tension on your shoulder.

You can close your eyes if you want.

- continued from previous page

As and when you open your eyes, stare at the blank paper again. Concentrate on that piece of paper for 1 min.

Next, turn your palm upwards and using just that one arm, slide the paper such that it balances just on your finger tips and thumb, not the palm.

If the paper falls, relax, don’t panic. Pick it up and hold it using your finger tips.

Straighten arm and breathe normally. Feel the tension on your hand (1 min).

Move your pinky finger away from the paper and then balance it with the remaining three fingers and thumb. Try to maintain the balance.

Build that bond between you and the paper.

Trust that piece of paper (1 min).

Remove your ring finger.

Balance the paper with just your thumb, index and middle finger (1 min).

Slowly remove thumb and middle finger and balance paper with your index finger.

Stare at that paper, do not let that paper control you. You control the paper (1 min).

Slowly clasp the paper with thumb and index finger and bring your arm down.

Exercise 1b: Action and consequence

Duration: 1 min

Materials: A4 paper

Instructions for students:

Bend your neck and tilt your head backwards.

Allow that piece of paper to rest on your face.

Make sure that paper is on your forehead and resting on the bridge of your nose.

Stand as still as possible.

Observe the way your breathe.

The paper is moving very gently from your mouth or from your nose.

After 1 min:

Breathe in and when you breathe out, exhale on the paper as hard as possible.

Concept: Words and Gestures Communicate

Exercise 2: Who am I?

Duration: 5 mins

Materials: Markers, face mask

Instructions for students (Pair work):

Write down one word on the mask -- one word that represents you.

If you can be described as one word, what would it be?

Think of the word and write it on the mask.

Hide that mask so your partner does not see it.

Stand at an arm’s length apart from partner and face him/her.

Stare at the person in front of you.

No giggling or smiling.

Have an indifferent face.

Breathe in and out and just look at that person.

Look into the person’s eyes (1 min).

Take out your mask and wear it.

Face your partner.

Stare at that person.

Look at that word in front of you.

Hold your right hand into a shooting gesture.

Both your fingers should be close enough yet they don’t touch.

Concentrate on your finger (1 min).

Put your hand down.

Take that piece of paper from the previous exercise.

Use it to slowly remove your mask.

Fold and hide your mask inside the paper.

Fold it the way you want because it represents you.

Now the paper becomes a material that safeguards that word.

This becomes a performance relic, a performance residue. It becomes a documentation of what happened in time and space, between you, the material and your partner.

“Our personal narratives are important, be forthcoming in sharing your stories. Consider how to translate personal stories through materials and artworks.”

- Ezzam Rahman

Suggested questions for post-activity discussion/follow-up:

1. How did you feel when you first held the paper?

2. What were some of your thoughts as you stared at the paper? Why did you think those thoughts?

3. Would you speak about what you have done as an artwork? Why or why not?

4. How was time and space engaged in performance art?

5. What gesture/action would you design to convey to an audience more about… (yourself, a social concern, etc.)?

Needless to say, creating a safe environment will encourage students who are new to performance art overcome their discomfort and to participate. Have them brainstorm on the meaning that everyday gestures convey. Engage them actively in conversations to have them understand how performance artists elicit empathy through their physical actions and use of materials.

View video of Ezzam Rahman’s masterclass HERE.

Culture of Intersections: Sharing by our Art Fraternity

We love anecdotes of real-life art teaching and learning experiences. Through sharing their personal journeys and discoveries, our art teachers reach out and connect with their colleagues to build collegiality. Learn how you can draw upon their experiences with what works for them, so that together we could grow and continually improve our students’ art learning experiences.

Cultivating Voices through Choices

Mrs. Angelina Chia Art Coordinator, Tampines North Primary School

Although students in my classes were actively participating in the lesson activities, I noticed that they were actively passive. They were actively waiting for and following instructions. When asked to generate their own ideas and think deeper about what they wanted to say through their artistic expressions, I was often met with looks of bewilderment. Even during art discussions, I was asking all the questions. When I asked if they had any questions or any what ifs, there was usually silence. I was exasperated. I wondered if I was silencing them and stifling their curiosity with my ‘well-planned’ lessons.

Implementing changes

After attending the NAEA conference in Seattle, I thought perhaps if I implemented the choice-based methodology and designed my classroom to facilitate for less structured lessons, I could encourage self-directed exploration, engender development of personal ideas and increase engagement.

When I embarked on the change with two classes of Primary 2s, I thought it was simply about rearranging the physical set-up, but as the weeks passed, I realized that was not enough to foster the dispositions and habits I had envisioned. Although students were excited about the opportunity to access materials of their choice, they had no idea how to manage this new freedom. Upon reflection, I learnt that I cannot separate choice from teaching artistic behaviour (TAB).

TAB is a curriculum that “offers a clear philosophy and structure to develop students’ artistic minds through choice” (Douglas & Jaquith, 2018). This pedagogy is premised on three major principles:

1. What do artists do? Considering where and how artists get their ideas and express them as well as their work behaviours.

2. The child is the artist. Placing the child in control of their artmaking processes.

3. The art room is the child’s studio.

Designing the environment to provide access to choices and support construction of knowledge.

The goal of a TAB-Choice curriculum is to help students reach independence. Therefore, I sat down with the students and had them talk about where they thought artists could get their ideas for their artmaking and I was amazed by their depth of thought.

With that data, I designed the task – Landscape Collage. Referencing Lim Cheng Hoe’s Singapore River, I had my students create their own creative interpretations after giving them a brief introduction to some watercolour techniques. After putting specific classroom routines in place, I started giving my students access first to a range of five materials and added material progressively until they had full access to a variety. In addition to

Students trying different ways of mixing colours.

the provision of materials, I also provided information about the materials, prepared menus that suggested how materials could be used, and gave students examples of artists’ artworks.

What did I learn?

Letting go of control was difficult. I realised that to amplify students’ voices, I had to be willing to give them control over their work and processes. When I learnt to step back and allow for students to learn through explorations and play instead of watching the clock and hurrying them to adhere to my timeline, they were more vested in their tasks. I was witnessing an organic co-construction of knowledge as students excitedly shared their findings, asked for and gave their opinions and demonstrated techniques they had discovered. They were talking more about their work and using art vocabulary in the relevant context without prompts from me.

I found that by relegating control, I now had more time during lessons to walk around and have dialogue with students 1-1, listen to them talk about their experiments and stories, guide them in their decision-making process or share alternative ways of trying out the materials. This was something I never had time to do as I was previously so busy managing supplies and spills. Most importantly, students were generating questions that demonstrated their curiosity about the world around them. They asked questions such as, “Do mountains grow?”,“ How do mountains become mountains?”

In addition, students found more personal meaning towards what they were doing, evident in their artist statements. Every collage was different, with different stories to tell.

Afterthoughts…

Change can be disruptive and inconvenient. I spent many hours adjusting the set-up, reflecting on my lessons when things did not work out and redesigning the lessons to better facilitate the play and exploratory episodes. There were

“This is my art, and it is about me and my ideas, so I want to choose what I use to make it.”

times when I saw students regressing to the ‘wait for instructions’ mode and felt that my efforts were futile. However, the little sparks that I saw when students excitedly raved about their discoveries and the energy they emitted when they were all raring to start lessons were testaments that the change was worthwhile. As students feel empowered, they took greater ownership of their learning and pride in their effort.

To sum it all, Sarah, one of my students said, “This is my art, and it is about me and my ideas, so I want to choose what I use to make it.” Indeed, the classroom should be about our students.

Reference: Douglas, K. M., & Jaquith, D. B. (2018). Engaging learners through artmaking: choice-based art education in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

The Arts as a Catalyst for Change: Engaging Students with Art through Words, Play, and Movement

Ms. Siti Rafidah Binte Rahman Art Teacher Temasek Junior College

Change, by definition, is an act or process through which something becomes different. In many ways, the arts allow change to happen through, among others, the process of making, exploring, uncovering the accidental, and questioning.

When I first embarked on my Critical Inquiry Networked Learning Community (CI NLC) project, I wanted to re-ignite some of my beliefs in what art learning could offer to my students. I had hoped my students could be uninhibited in their explorations and be inclined to question the world around them, thus informing their artmaking journey. The idea for my CI Project stemmed from the need to encourage this behaviour in students. In a climate where the product and grades are paramount, arts education can be a good catalyst for change, and the art educator is a crucial agent for this change to happen.

#inspo – NAEA 2018

The main source of inspiration for my CI Project came from the National Art Education Association (NAEA) Convention 2018 in Seattle, Washington. NAEA was a rich source of inspiration where various teachers from different backgrounds shared many strategies and resources used in and outside of the art classroom. I was particularly inspired by two of the breakout sessions I attended.

The first breakout session that encouraged me to explore using movement and play in my art classroom was #STAYWOKETeaching Responsible Citizenship to Teens by Adetty Pérez Miles, Shoshana McIntosh, Monica Barrera, and Kathleen Hamrick. This presentation explored multiple strategies for introducing responsible citizenship in the visual arts classroom through movement, art making, media and technology. It also focused on using counter-public art approaches, the collective experience, and responsible online citizenship in order to encourage awareness, empathy, and action concerning wider social issues, in order to enact change and allow students to be “brave upstanders”.

The second session that inspired me was Improv, Art, and Inclusion Workshop by Chelsea Hogan. In this workshop, participants learnt how to apply improvisation (improv) techniques such as active listening, creating an unscripted performance, flexibility and play. Improv is an acting skill in which actors learn to think of scenarios, dialogue, and context on the spot. Improv strategies are open-ended and can be used when analysing art. These strategies encourage and develop vocabulary, collaboration, collectiveness, and idea-generation.

CI

NLC

2018

Study Trip to Seattle.

An approach to counter-public art: Counter-public art sticker designs to champion a cause.

Walking in space – Understanding the artist’s body through movement

As an educator who teaches both drama and art, I have always been interested to see how drama techniques can be used to inform art teaching and learning. It was through the sessions at NAEA that I was inspired to begin this project and research into how drama techniques, such as movement and improv, could be used in the art classroom. To me, there was no better way to start than the visual art form that is closest to drama: performance art.

One of the questions I frequently asked myself from the moment I embarked on this project was: How might drama techniques help students with ideageneration in art-making, and the Study of Visual Arts (SOVA)? This larger question led me to start exploring how students can conceptualise and execute a performance art piece using movement and improv.

As I was implementing this project and gathering data, I gained new insight. My role as a teacher-researcher became more pronounced. It was important for me to be open to new insights, and I had to find a balance between gathering hard, observable data, and being open to the unknown.

During the course of data collection, I observed that my students became more confident. They were able to articulate their thoughts using appropriate art vocabulary, and applied their understanding of movement to their own performance. Perhaps what struck my students most was the reaction they received from other students who were unintended audience to their performances.

Reflections from Arts Education Conference (AEC) 2018

My CI Project journey culminated in a sharing at AEC 2018. Preparation for the sharing allowed me, in my role as a teacher-researcher, to look even more carefully at the data I had gathered, as well as to reflect on how I could improve on using drama techniques to teach visual art.

One of the feedback received was how I could ensure an authentic audience for my students when doing their performance art piece. As audience engagement is an important aspect of performance art, this is definitely something I can consider, while at the same time maintaining students’ safety and the chance to engage their peers.

Afterthoughts

So, why is it important for the arts to be a catalyst for change? Moreover, how can art educators be the change agents that are so needed in arts education today? Why is this role important?

In my CI Project journey, I have learnt that the arts allow for dialogue, exploration, questioning, and curiosity. As change agents, we are responsible for guiding our students to view the world with empathy, to find meaning in the things they observe, and to make their own meaning through their artmaking. As performance art directly engages the mind and body through doing, it is a good entry point to start the winds of positive change we hope to see in the world.

Through this project, I have seen my students become something different than who they usually are, much like the definition for change at the beginning of this reflection. My hope is for my students to be able to develop a disposition of empathy and understanding, use these as lenses to see art and the world, create meaningful dialogue, and incite the change that we need to see.

Left: Students re-enacting Tang Da Wu’s “They Poach the Rhino and Chop Off His Horn to Make this Drink”.

Right: Performance by Ning Xuan, CG01/18, Untitled (Hugging).

Students’ written reviews of their peers’ works.

Prime Time for Change Key Learning Points from Priming the Art Classroom

Ms. Lim Jia Ning Michelle Art and Literature Teacher Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School

Michelle was one of the participants for the Critical Inquiry Project: Priming the Art Classroom Networked Learning Community (NLC). In this article, she shares her key takeaways from her 10-month-long journey with priming.

WHY? WHAT IF…?

Question Default States

After attending the workshop conducted by the Design Incubation Centre (DIC) of the National University of Singapore, I tried my hand at using priming strategies and design thinking to tackle various classroom issues such as improving student safety and student engagement, as well as growing students’ sense of ownership to their learning spaces. Although the problems were unique, the underlying approach to finding solutions turned out to be similar: to question the default states in our classroom. The way that things have always been done may not necessarily be the best or only way to do it. Thus, looking at our familiar environment while asking ourselves, “Why” and “What if” was a way to shake off preconceived notions of how things should be, and start to imagine how things could be. I enjoyed how doing so reframed problems into opportunities for innovation, as it generated excitement for the possibilities that were to be shaped.

Yet questioning status quo was only the beginning of the process. The next step was to derive solutions by seeking inspiration from various sources.

DOES THIS APPLY?

Ideate Systematically

During the workshop with DIC, we were introduced to priming strategy cards. It was a set of 33 cards that contained various angles from which one might approach a problem. Each card contained a generic suggestion, such as “Scatter cues in the environment to reinforce commitment to a specific goal”, “Create the impression of being surveyed on” and “Use colour appropriately as a stimulus”. In considering any given problem, one could cycle through the set of cards and choose strategies that seem related to the problem, and use them as starting points for devising possible solutions. Such a tool was useful as one could focus on adapting strategies to the problem, rather than re-invent the wheel on how to approach a problem.

WHAT HAVE OTHERS DONE OR SAID? Read for Inspiration

The literature that this NLC exposed us to was also eyeopening. Books such as Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein helped us to understand key concepts behind why

How I used a priming strategy card as an inspiration for generating student conversations about safety when they step into the Art classroom.

Recommended Reads from an Educator’s Perspective

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

people behave the way that they do, and what policy makers and researchers have done in order to nudge people towards desired behaviours. Though it seemed strange at first for an Art teacher to be reading about Science, I learnt that behavioural science and design thinking can provide a spring of ideas for more effective teaching and learning. After all, understanding how humans behave can help us to pre-empt studdents’ behaviour more accurately, and become more effective realists in the classroom.

WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

Dare to Try

The Space by Rebecca Hare and Robert Dillon challenges educators to consider the question: “What is the worst that could happen from changing your students’ learning space?” I felt that this was a powerful call to action for all educators who believe that we can do more, but are perhaps afraid to try. If you are looking for encouragement, you will find it here. This book inspired me to take the leap of faith and try my hand at designing with, rather than for my students. I assembled a team of student volunteers from the classes that I taught, in order to work on improving the art room’s washing area. In doing so, I learnt that there are students who are sensitive enough to notice the conditions of their learning spaces, and caring enough to want to make a difference. By taking the chance to work with our students more often, we create opportunities for students to learn that they have the power to effect positive change in their environment. This could be invaluable in empowering our youth as well as growing their sense of ownership to the places in which they live, play and work.

By Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein

An informative and entertaining introductory read on the science behind why people behave the way they do.

How practical / applicable are the ideas?

How dense is the theory?

How easy is it to read?

The Space: A Guide for Educators

By Rebecca Louise Hare & Dr. Robert Dillon

A hands-on workbook and idea generator that advocates for design better learning spaces for students by involving them.

How practical / applicable are the ideas?

How dense is the theory?

How easy is it to read?

Thinking, Fast and Slow

By Daniel Kahneman

An informationally dense book that is ideal for one who wants to understand ground-breaking behavioural science theory in depth.

How practical / applicable are the ideas?

How dense is the theory?

How easy is it to read?

How I used priming to instil a sense of student ownership.

APriming the Art Classroom – What, How and Why

The Critical Inquiry (CI) Project: Priming the Art Classroom has been an amazing experience because I was able to gain insights from the two workshops (conducted by Playeum and Design Incubation Centre from NUS) and the critique sessions.

The workshop at Playeum taught me how to transform a space for learning using recyclable materials and how to encourage young learners to explore and experiment with different materials.

t the end of 2017, I had just finished my first year of teaching in a primary school. I noticed that the art studios were rarely used and it looked more like a store room than a place for learning. Hence, I wanted to do something about it by gathering new ideas on how to improve the art studio to make it an engaging place to learn.

The workshop by Design Incubation Centre, NUS, provided insights on how to prime the art classroom using Design Thinking and their Prime Cards. Not only did I learn how to create an experience to influence the behaviours of students, I also learnt ways to conduct Design Thinking with my students.

After attending both workshops, I started to list down the problems I faced in school and used the concept of empathy in Design Thinking to help me identify the key

Ms. Nurul I’zzah Binte Basiron

Art Teacher

De La Salle School

The De La Salle Art Toolkit.

Left: Priming Strategy Cards used during the workshop.

Right: Brainstorming ideas using Post-it notes. Bottom left: Checklist for toolkit.

Using the toolkit to organise materials.

issue. This was done through interviews and surveys with my students and informal conversations with other educators. Upon defining the key problem, I applied different priming strategies to help me think of creative solutions. The prime cards were also used during the prototyping stage to help me improve on the Art Toolkit that I was creating.

Budget was a constraint and I had to find ways to create and improve my prototypes during the project.

In the lead up to the sharing at the Arts Education Conference, I thought through deeply on how I could better utilise the Art Toolkit that I had created to be more just a kit for storing tools. I designed ways to use the kit to be a tool to encourage collaboration and critical thinking to take place in the classroom as well. I am excited that my sharing encouraged and inspired other teachers with ways to improve their art classrooms.

As educators, we need to prepare our students with learning agility to succeed in a VUCA world. Learning agility comprises of the nine dimensions which are flexibility, speed, experimenting, performance risk taking, collaborating, information gathering, feedback seeking and reflecting (Woodward, 2017). Therefore, as art educators, we need to provide opportunities to nurture these nine behaviourial patterns in our students, both through lessons as well as the learning environments that we design.

Reference:

Woodward, M. (2017, July 13). How to Thrive in a VUCA World: The Psychology of Navigating Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambigous Times. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ spotting-opportunity/201707/how-thrive-in-vuca-world

The Art of Collaboration

Mdm. Jessica Kho Siok Ching, Senior Teacher (Art)

Mdm. Low York Sheng, Senior Teacher (Science)

Marymount Convent School

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model states: ‘It

is not about what we do, it’s about why we do what we do’.

We believe that art and science are not subjects on their own and they can be taught in an interdisciplinary fashion. Through interdisciplinary learning, not only will it enable our students to make meaningful connections across their learning by applying what is learnt, it also provides opportunities for them to deepen their understanding and learning.

Our collaboration first started when we learnt about the focus of the Youth for Environment Day 2016. Both of us were enthusiastic about how we could play our part in saving the Earth. We discussed about how both Art and Science Departments

could collaborate to design and implement an interdisciplinary unit that could create an impact on our students’ learning and inspire other teachers to envision the possible learning connections between art and other subjects. According to Lev Vygotsky (1962), ‘Learning takes place through the interaction students have with their peers, teachers, and other experts. Teachers can create a learning environment that maximises the learner’s ability to interact with each other through discussion, collaboration and feedback.’ Both of us shared this common goal as we wanted to provide opportunities for our students, during their learning of both subjects, to demonstrate their passion, imagination and commitment to saving the environment. Through

this interdisciplinary collaboration, our Primary 5 students experienced the extension of learning in Science through Art by creating meaningful artworks to promote awareness on environmental issues. As we engaged ourselves in the planning of our collaborative project, we also built trust to achieve our common goal.

After much discussion, the Art Department planned an Art inquirybased lesson unit plan using the Art Inquiry Model (AIM) and Let’s Talk about Art thinking routines for our Primary 5 students. This was an extension of what they had learnt in their Primary 4 Science lessons about heat (climate change) the previous year. In their Primary 5 Science lessons this year, they learnt about water pollution and conservation in

Students preparing for group presentation.

Term 3. We named this collaborative environment project “Heart the Earth” which means hugging the Earth to love and treasure it, and to remind us to play our part to raise awareness on the environmental issues. We worked with the big idea -- Art has a role in society and selected two local artists’ work -The Singapore River by Lim Cheng Hoe and The Net: Most Definitely the Singapore River by Teo Eng Seng for discussion. The elegant art task for students was to design a banner to raise awareness on environmental issues and advocate ways to save our planet. At the same time, the Science Department planned and conducted a Science Early Bird Assembly on environment topics such as energy and water conservation, climate change, biodiversity and quizzes in the morning for the whole

school in Semester 1. In addition, environmental awareness activities and science inquiry-based lessons were conducted for the Primary 5 students in Semester 2.

Through the reflections of our Primary 5 students, it is evident that they developed 21st Century competencies skills through the learning process. They were able to carry out their research independently, made sound decision on their banner designs and took an active role in solving problems encountered during collaborative work. Throughout the project, our students made progress and were actively involved in their learning. Their project culminated with all the banners being exhibited in school. The creative banners not only created a vibrant visual environment but also

impacted other students to be more aware of environmental concerns. We noticed that the younger students in the school started to keep the school environment clean by picking up litter, or cleaning up after themselves after they had eaten in the canteen, amongst other things.

As educators, we believe that learning is meaningful when we understand the purpose behind it. Through the designing and planning of our collaborative project, we have learnt that collaboration is possible when we build trust and share a common goal to create purposeful learning for our students. Our sharing at AEC 2018 has strengthened our belief that collaboration plays an important role in deepening our students’ learning and inspired other teachers to envision possible learning connections between Art and other disciplines.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

Sinek, S. (2009). Start with why: how great leaders inspire everyone to take action.

Reference:

Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

New York: Portfolio.

Students painting their banners.

Students using the internet to do research.

Artist & Citizenship: Facilitating Productive Discussion on Contemporary Issues In and Through Art

Mr. Ben Khor Teng Chih, Lead Teacher (Art), Ngee Ann Secondary School

Ms. Wang Shi Hui, Art Teacher, Gan Eng Seng School

The meaningful integration of diverse disciplines into a singular module is usually sought after for its perceived efficiency and innovative nature. Why then do we not dare to execute or plan for more of such lessons? This was the challenge we set ourselves by facilitating an intersection of Art and Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) in the SYF Art Exhibition 2018.

To help teachers understand our facilitation processes, we shared some key Pedagogical Practices of the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP) at the Arts Education Conference 2018.

Students brainstorming for ideas.

Photos

students

research.

1. Determining Objectives

To set the context for our student artists, we shared the characteristics of our VUCA world and phenomenon such as alternative facts and falsehoods. We encouraged open discourse about the students’ sense of Citizenship and Identity, to draw out ideas relevant for an original artwork. We also encouraged students to decide the direction and mode of their artwork. This gradual release of responsibility empowered students to make considered decisions and helped them to realise that they were not just creating a piece of visual work, but responding with their personal stories to the theme of Artist and Citizenship.

2. Learner Profile

For this challenge, we decided to facilitate our projects differently based on age groups, academic profiles and personality differences. These differences were intentional so as to allow students to see, feel and experience perspectives and personas from across the social fabric of our community.

3. Positive Classroom Culture

We realised very early on in the facilitation process that we had to cultivate a positive classroom culture to encourage meaningful participation. To do this, we sat down with our students to create ground rules which everyone agreed on. These became the key principles guiding our discussions and collaboration.

4. Planning Guiding Questions

Given such an open brief, our students were initially very confused and did not know how to react. We had to provide guiding questions to scaffold their learning process. These questions helped to bring personal and collaborative dimensions to the students’ thinking and artmaking process. The questions also provided them with some form of structure to guide their work.

5. Arousing Interest

This project was not just a visual art project. It was an opportunity to allow our students to affect change in their immediate communities and develop a meaningful sense of identity and rootedness. To achieve this, we modeled the research process and shared them with our students. They were incredibly interested in the original research from their teachers and this inspired them to generate a great research collection of interviews, vintage photos and drawings.

Our key role as facilitators in this process, was to ensure that every student learnt to develop pride and ownership. Students need to feel that they have contributed and have gained something positive from every session. We decided that they could make decisions on almost all aspects of their work as long as they could justify their choices. This provided an impetus for every child to contribute at every stage of the project.

In Conclusion

Our students expressed that they were able to understand and see the purpose behind the integration of the two disciplines through this project. This was important to us as our efforts paved the way forward, enabling our students to see meaningful possibilities in collaborations.

Art by the Community for the Community

Students’ Reflections

• “We experienced a sense of achievement when the residents complimented us on our efforts.”

• “Many of us felt that through the activity, we have added something special to the neighbourhood, and have shown the residents that Nanyang JC cares for the community by adding a small but significant difference to their immediate surroundings.”

• “This activity gave us a chance to bond as a class and get to know one another better, and it made us realise that community service can be fun and rewarding.”

Ms. Hew Soo Hun, Subject Head (Art) Nanyang Junior College

The journey of Nanyang Junior College’s 50-Mural Project started in 2007. Back then, our Principal, Mr Kwek Hiok Chuang, broached this idea of painting 30 murals in the Braddell Heights estate to celebrate our college’s 30th Anniversary. He had envisioned it to be a different kind of celebration through which our college could demonstrate to the Braddell Heights residents that our students and staff are a part of the community, and that we too, can be active contributors to this big family.

The entire planning and execution process was very timeconsuming, spanning almost 6 months. From doing site-recce around the neighbourhood to identify suitable void deck walls, generating different mural designs and tracing them on the walls to handling massive logistics requirements, the students and teachers of the Art Elective Programme (AEP) showed a tremendous amount of grit and dedication. Following 4 months of preparation, we mobilised the entire cohort of about 700 JC1 students to different parts of the neighbourhood to paint all 30 murals in a full-day painting event. The touching up of

the murals was just as tedious as it took the AEP students more than 1 month to refine all the murals painted by the non-art students.

The journey continued with NYJC adding new murals and touching up existing ones during its 35th Anniversary. In 2015, NYJC decided to add another 15 murals to the 35 existing ones, making it a grand total of 50 murals to commemorate Singapore’s 50 years of independence. Our mural designs captured the quintessence of Singapore - our history, heritage and culture. We wanted the students to reflect on what it meant to be a Singaporean and appreciate the uniqueness of our little red dot. The expansion of the mural project into its current grand scale would not have been possible without the sponsorship of NTUC FairPrice, and the support of Braddell Heights GROs, Marine Parade Town Council and PAssionarts. The sustained working relationship with these partners had helped to fund and facilitate the execution of this SG50 mural project.

Looking back, NYJC’s community art legacy has spanned almost a decade. Our artistic endeavour drew much interest and gratitude from the residents. Some even offered to buy drinks for the students as a token of appreciation for their hard work in enhancing the estate. It created an authentic learning experience for our students as they laboured to serve the community. For most of them, they re-engaged with art making, which was probably an activity that they hardly had a chance to experience in JC. It also made us realise the impact our living environment can have on cultivating a sense of belonging to a place and a community. On a personal note, the project has reinforced my belief that we can do good with Art, and Art should be available for all.

Traditional Made Contemporary -Making Sense of Clay Through Play

Ceramics or pottery is commonly associated with elegant forms of vessels and crockery. In my art lessons, students learn about the ambiguous qualities of clay and how through shaping, the application of various techniques and firing, it can become a piece of permanence.

I spent my early childhood playing with play-doh, which encourages creativity and development of motorskills through manipulation of form, mostly through trial and error. By squishing, squeezing, rolling, pulling, pushing, pinching, I moulded basic, but odd looking shapes at first, then progressed onto more complicated objects like fruits and animals. There were various knick-knacks that I experimented with. I remember using a toy machine, similar to that of an extruder, watching in amazement as long tubular coils of various shapes

emerged at the forceful press of both my hands. I would then use those coils to build structures and objects.

Teaching Ceramics:

My childhood experiences with playdoh shaped the way I teach ceramics to my students -- by tapping on their prior knowledge and skills. For some of them, working with clay may be a new experience, but they caught on quickly and enjoyed the tactile hands-on activities.

I believe that the learning of ceramics needs to go beyond the traditional acquisition of technical skills to allow students to explore, experiment, and to make sense of clay through play. Teaching the fundamentals of ceramics -- pinching, coiling, slab work and throwing, will establish the foundation upon which students

could push their boundaries of imagination and expression. At the same time, it will enable students to appreciate the need for ensuring the structural integrity needed when creating artwork using clay. Through their experiences, my students learnt that clay is not merely a dull dusty material but one that allows them to exercise their creativity and one that will help them to acquire the various Studio Habits of Mind.

Mr. Dexter Sim Yu Min, Art Teacher Westwood Secondary School

STAR’s milestone programme -- Contemporary Art Practices in Schools! (CAPS!), is a week-long programme which comprises of an artist’s talk and a series of workshops or open studio sessions. CAPS! allowed our art teachers to experience contemporary inquiry-based approaches to artmaking, through the investigation of ideas, materials, and technical processes. Contemporary artists working in different areas of expertise -2D, 3D, Media and Curating, were invited to mentor our teacherparticipants over the course of the five days.

Contemporary Art Practices in Schools! (CAPS!)

The following workshops were successfully concluded in November 2018:

1.

2.

3.

4.

CAPS! provided a wonderful opportunity for our teachers to renew and refresh their role as learners and practitioners of art. The following reflective notes by teacher-participants reveal how they find new energy and excitement in their artmaking.

Painting with Colours by Ng Woon Lam

Express with Tape by SPREAD

Print with Me by Eitaro Ogawa and Tamae Iwasaki

Curating by Tan Shir Ee

CAPS! Express with Tape With SPREAD Design Duo

Our key takeaway:

OHow could we apply what we’ve learnt with students?

Through various short yet thoughtprovoking activities, SPREAD Design Duo motivated us to make art from personal stories based on our on past experiences. The developmental process from storytelling to visualising the story through the use of basic geometrical shapes was challenging and fun. The many opportunities to share our ideas with the group further helped us to gain clarity as we developed our ideas.

The processes that we experienced reinforced in us that we have to create opportunities in our classroom for students to spar ideas with their classmates and to brainstorm on the suitability of various materials and media. This will in turn better impact their

Compiled by:

Mr. Mohammad Zabid Bin Jabar, Senior Teacher,

Ms. Lai Jia Hui, Art Teacher

Ms. Shen Jiaqi, Art Teacher, Peirce Secondary School

ur group was excited about using washi tape to make art as it was a new media for us. Our excitement reminded us that we need to provide opportunities for our students to explore various media to capture their attention and fuel their imagination.

artworks and encourage them to critically review their choice of media in artmaking.

Why is it important for teachers to have the opportunity to learn from practising artists and/or develop our own art practise?

Learning from the SPREAD Design Duo was a rare and valuable opportunity for us to create art with contemporary artists. Such first-hand learning added value to ourselves as art practitioners and in turn, we could also share the insights gained with our students. Students sometimes look at contemporary art in galleries and question the simplicity and the value pegged to the artwork. We could leverage upon this experience of learning and working with the artists to better inform and guide our students. Hearing the thoughts directly from the artists and listening to the comments from other participants helped us see how contemporary art can indeed be meaningful despite taking on a very simplified form of presentation.

Throughout the week, the critique and feedback received on our work also helped us to think about ways to improve and to refine our aesthetics judgement. It was a period of dedicated time to be immersed in our artmaking, to step out of our comfort zone to experiment and play with a new kind of material!

Top: Sketching our ideas during the workshop.

Bottom: Presenting our work to our peers.

CAPS! Print with Me

With Eitaro Ogawa and Tamae Iwasaki

Compiled by:

Ms. Chua Lee Beng, Lead Teacher (Art), St. Anthony’s Canossian Primary School

Mdm. Ong Theng Choo, Art Teacher, Fuhua Secondary School

A small and cozy group of six art teachers spent five enriching days working and learning from the master printers, Eitaro Ogawa and Tamae Iwasaki. With the intention of helping us understand how printmaking works, Eitaro and Tamae exposed us to various techniques of printmaking such as relief printing, intaglio printing, stamping and stencilling. Through the introduction of their own works and those of other artists, we discussed and looked into the boundary of what printmaking is and could be. They wanted us to adopt an experimental and exploratory mindset in employing printmaking techniques. The possibilities seemed endless as it depended on one’s definition of the word ‘print’. In our explorations, we were encouraged to push the boundary of printmaking, to be fearless in breaking the rules and trying new things.

Eitaro and Tamae set us on a path to find and define our artistic identity both as an individual and as a community with the theme -- Who Am I? This search for our identity was challenging but exciting as we dug deep into ourselves to answer the question. Eitaro and Tamae aided us in our artistic processes through one-on-one consultations with them.

As participants, we quickly formed a bond with our sensei in the few days together, with spontaneous conversations, discussing, researching and experimenting while we created our works. We shared our thoughts on art, our life experiences and had many moments of laughter together. Truly, our sensei embodied the genuine meaning of creating a safe, joyful and exciting classroom environment for their students to be. For example, when one of us tried something new, like stuffing the prints into cups, shining a light through the plastic matrix to get a shadow ‘print’, or rubbing textures on the floor

to get unexpected textures, these experiments were always affirmed by Eitaro and Tamae with constructive feedback.

Interesting assorted materials such as leaves and kueh-making moulds were brought into the studio as catalysts for experimentation. The sky was the limit and we knew that whatever we wanted to do, we were not judged and in fact our endeavours would be well supported by Eitaro and Tamae. The passionate and loving Keyakismos (as the artist duo calls themselves) have shown us what a joyful classroom, full of inquisitive and excited students should look like. It was so enjoyable, most of us came in earlier on the last 2 days to work more intently on our artworks.

This CAPS! workshop experience has inspired some of us to collaborate and create a printmaking installation piece for the aedge 2019 art exhibition. As a collective, we hope to use printmaking as a visual language to explore and express our individual identities and our group identity as part of a greater social community.

Top: Examples of our experiments with stamping and relief printing.

Bottom left: Tamae showing us how to do stencilling. Bottom right: Tamae and Eitaro with the prints and plates.

Our group consultating with Tamae and Eitaro.

CAPS! Paint with Colours

With Ng Woon Lam

Compiled by:

Ms. Tan Sok Tiow, Art Teacher, Tanjong Katong Secondary School

Mdm. Toh Hui Leng, Art Teacher, Geylang Methodist Secondary School

Mr Ng’s workshop helped us to appreciate the attributes of colours. Through his painting demonstrations and explanation we had a better understanding of the foundation of colour theory and the application of colour space in the artmaking process. Now we feel more competent and confident in making more polished artistic expressions after the workshop.

“ The fluidity of the medium amazes me. It allows one to explore and create stunning compositions to allow the viewer to experience different moods. Mastering the colour map and space changed my perception of working with watercolours. I enjoy the medium and I can also pass on the learning to my colleagues and students.”

- Norisah Binte Mohd Ismail

“ The idea of Visual Literacy -- Why artists use colours the way they do. I look at artworks differently now!”

- Abigail

“ The nine of us quickly came to the realisation that the wide kaleidoscope of colours is really daunting yet exciting at the same time. Under the guidance of Mr Ng, we were challenged to stretch the possibilities of how colours can be used.”

- Hui Leng

“ Set your own pace while painting. Explore the possibilities of each given task. You will get there. You get there and then, conquer the next task.”

- Julia

“ I attend CAPS! to be INSPIRED, to DEVELOP MY ARTISTIC SKILL & TEACHING PEDAGOGY.

My key takeaway: “Break the Fear” a s espoused by Mr Ng.

Application to teaching:

1. Remove fear in learning and doing art.

2. Make easy the learning of difficult concepts/skills.

3. Structure the progression of my lessons from easy to difficult.

4. Help students to feel and be confident to learn.”

- Nurul Izzah Binte Basiron

“ What is interesting about CAPS! is how fluid the sessions are -you learn as much as you want to learn, and you have the flexibility to explore and do your own work. Sometimes, the ability to make that decision brings out the joy of learning.”

-

Beryl

“ Key takeaways:

Tones -- If we can master the tones, we can create the moods.

Hue – Do not use colours that are not related so that you can stabilise the picture.

Chroma – A measure of how intense the colours are.

Why did I attend CAPS!? I enjoyed myself in the previous CAPS! and I want to continue learning. I am not good at painting and so I want to learn more.”

- Hilwa “ Mr Ng challenged us to re-think about the colour theory we used to know by introducing us to the three-dimensional Munsell Colour System. He also made us ponder how to effectively use friend-enemy colours system in a painting. A fun and reflective workshop indeed!”

- Sok Tiow

“ Takeaway 1:

I gained a new understanding on the relationship between colours and colour dimensions (Munsell 3D colour system). This will help me to reconsider how I would pair, layer and mix colours in my future works or painting demonstrations for students. Thank you Mr Ng for correcting my perspective through this very enlightening experience!

Takeaway

2:

I would like to thank Mr Ng for sharing with us his approach towards watercolour painting, challenging us to re-think the opacity, density and strokes of watercolour painting.”

- Ji Ji

Mr. Ng demonstrating painting techniques to our group.

CAPS! Curating and Collaboration

With Tan Shir Ee (Head of Patronage & Partnerships, Singapore Art Museum)

Compiled by Ms. Joyce Teo, Art Teacher St. Joseph’s Institution

What does it mean to curate?

Is it to select, organize and take care of objects in a museum/ gallery? What about assembling student works and putting them on display?

The Internet has changed the meaning of curating.

Pinterest? Instagram? Are we all content curators?

Who “qualifies” as a curator?

A specialist degree? Recognised great taste? International Art Speak?

“ This intensive workshop allowed me to understand the roles and responsibilities of a curator. It is important to clarify the objective of an exhibition as it will give direction to the conceptualisation of the show.”

Nurrulhuda Shaik Aminuddin, ACS (Barker)

“ The one-week experience has given me a snapshot of the Singapore contemporary art landscape. Speaking to key professionals who have been involved in various genres of exhibitions have provided me a holistic view of what it takes to make an exhibition happen and the importance of communication skills needed to negotiate, accommodate and compromise.”

Tan Shun Ru, Xinmin Secondary School

Dialogue

with an institutional

CURATOR -- Andrea Fam

Andrea, curator at SAM, shared the process behind curating a show of commissioned artworks. She shared how not knowing how the works look like beforehand meant ongoing communication with the artists, their mentors and the exhibitions team, while considering the objectives of a national museum, as well as the building’s physical constraints.

Dialogue with an independent ARTIST-CURATOR -- Tay Kay Chin

Kay Chin, a photographer himself, rallied his own network of contacts to complete a book project that evolved into a photography exhibition overseas. He shared the freedom and challenges of curating as an independent entity.

Dialogue with an EXHIBITION DESIGNER -- Heleston Chew

Heleston, an experienced exhibition designer, spoke passionately about everything from wall colour, lighting, graphic design, acoustics to ensuring that the exhibits are conducive for viewing for audience on wheelchair and are safe for children; not a single detail was spared. It was an eyeopening experience for us all who were not cognizant of this role in the museum prior to the workshop.

Curating is more than the relationship between artworks within a space.

Dialogue with a PROJECT MANAGER -- Koh Hui Ting

It is the art of negotiating different aspects of exhibition-making , to produce a viewing experience that achieves an end goal in a very particular context.

Hui Ting, who worked on LTA’s Art-in-Transit programme, shared the particularities of working for a corporate organisation on long-term and large-scale projects. She liaised with artists, curators, architects, contractors while managing timeline, workflow and budget. It is common in many other instances that the curator plays this role as well.

“ I’ve seen how curating relates to life and its experiences, how your life experience spurs you to create art, or to create an experience or sensation for your audience. It (curating) is in itself an enriching life experience when collaborating with others to make it possible.”

Ng

Wen

Jie, Hougang Secondary School

“ The information from the sharing sessions have informed me as an art educator, to revisit my own curriculum and recalibrate to ensure that interested students are better equipped with the skills and knowledge needed for future jobs in the art industry.”

Tan Shun Ru, Xinmin Secondary School

Prelude to MUS.E.S 2019

An Email Interview with our Outstanding Educator In Residence (OEIR) -- Ms. Pamela Streeter (Head of Learning, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa)

How would you introduce yourself?

At heart I am a curriculum designer. I have 20 years of experience working at a system level to create the conditions for meaningful and engaging lifelong learning to occur. The focus of much of my work has been guiding and challenging the conversation about the future of learning, transformational learning approaches, and the role of digital technologies in learning and life.

Through my work at Te Papa, I have the chance every day to translate those ideas into something that works for individuals on the ground. The best part of my day is seeing young people taking ownership of Te Papa as their own space for learning and life.

Outside of work, I’m mum to Madeleine (5 years old) and Evelyn (7 years old), who particularly love Te Papa’s art gallery Toi | Art, and are very excited to be part of the wider Te Papa team.

educational designer and curriculum thought leader.

When the opportunity arose to become Head of Learning at Te Papa, I jumped at the chance to make real the learning opportunities I was part of designing at the system level, and to make this amazingly rich resource be even better for learners.

What is unique about Te Papa?

One of our founding principles at Te Papa is that of Mana Taonga – which refers to a fundamental commitment to give to all the Iwi (the tribes of our Māori people) a very real sense of ownership in the Museum.

By this principle, we recognise the authority of communities to care, conserve, curate and interpret their taonga (treasures). This philosophy permeates every aspect of what we do, and not just with Mana Whenua (the people of the land – Māori).

negotiate programmes with gallery educators, which – while engaging and exciting, leave learners as passive recipients of someone else’s plan.

I hope that through the programmes we offer at Te Papa, every learner comes away understanding that the museum belongs to them. That every facility, every tool, and all the skills, knowledge and capability of this learning institution ultimately belongs to them to use in whatever way they want.

How do you think museums can be a catalyst for interdisciplinary collaborations in learning?

The real world isn’t split into subjects and disciplines. Life combines and recombines ideas all the time, and museums are a reflection of our life and who we are. They are the perfect context to explore ideas in new ways and from new angles.

How did you get involved in museum education?

I originally trained as a biologistresearching animal reproductive physiology, but alongside my studies I had a part time job at our local museum. This lead to a permanent job when I graduated, where I helped learners of all ages use the research and inquiry tools of the museum for their own exploration.

After taking time to travel the world, I returned to New Zealand and took a role with the New Zealand Ministry of Education, where I stayed for 15 years – developing a career as an

We at Te Papa have a role as kaitiaki (caretakers) of the collections and their associated stories, but the collections belong to the people of Aotearoa | New Zealand, and it is their right to access, understand and learn about them, and to interpret and respond to them as they see fit. Hence the concept of ‘shared authority’ is one that defines much of what we do, and the results of this can be absolutely incredible.

What do you want students and teachers to take away when they visit Te Papa?

Often learners are led in museums a little too much. Teachers plan and

As more and more as museums offer themselves up as a platform from which people can grapple with real challenges and real problems, will then the constructs of disciplines begin to fall away. It is all just knowledge, skills and context to be used to challenge and develop the way we think now.

What are you looking forward to most for your first trip to Singapore as STAR’s OEIR for MUS.E.S 2019?

Meeting so many people and sharing ideas for ways we can all get better at this amazing work we are entrusted to do.

Ms. Seow Ai Wee

Deputy Director (Art)

Mr. Lim Kok Boon

Master Teacher (Art)

Seow_Ai_Wee@moe.gov.sg

6664 1558

Mdm. Victoria Loy

Master Teacher (Art)

Lim_Kok_Boon@moe.gov.sg

6664 1502

Victoria_Loy@moe.gov.sg

6664 1551

Ms. Dorathy Lye

Senior Academy Officer (Art)

Ms. Low Sok Hui Senior Academy Officer (Art)

Mdm. Pang Ming Ing Academy Officer (Art)

Ms. Chia Ying Academy Officer (Art)

Ms. Tan Bee Ngoh Programme Executive

Dorathy_Lye@moe.gov.sg

6664 1546

Low_Sok_Hui@moe.gov.sg

6664 1548

Pang_Ming_Ing@moe.gov.sg

6664 1550

Chia_Ying@moe.gov.sg

6664 1545

Tan_Bee_Ngoh@moe.gov.sg

6664 1549