The Chronicle
By Joshua Nyapimbi
8 August 2012
This article was motivated by the just-ended high schools drama competition jointly organised by Plan and Intwasa Festival.
I would like to use this competition as my entry point to explore and challenge us all engaged with rights-based arts education in schools or simply arts education.
I need to put a disclaimer from the onset that I am well-meaning in my critique of arts education initiatives currently being provided in our schools by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture on one hand and non-governmental organisations and arts practitioners and arts organisations on the other hand. My concerns and recommendations herein are primarily from the perspective of an arts advocate and practitioner on arts education as well as a parent who desires the best for all children in respect of arts education. Through conversations I can safely say many others share the same concerns and recommended corrective measures.
To begin with, it is important to acknowledge that at the international level we have the Seoul Agenda: Goals for the Development of Arts Education, which was a major outcome of Unesco’s Second World Conference on Arts Education held in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, on 25-28 May 2010. As a product of Unesco’s Second World Conference on Arts Education, the Seoul Agenda is intended to build on the Unesco Road Map for Arts Education that was a major outcome of the first world conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2006. The road map offered an important theoretical and practical framework that provided guidance for advancing the qualitative development and growth of arts education.
The Seoul Agenda calls upon Unesco member states, civil society, professional organisations and communities to recognise its governing goals, to employ the proposed strategies, and to implement the action items in a concerted effort to realise the full potential of high quality arts education to positively renew educational systems, to achieve crucial social and cultural objectives, and ultimately to benefit children, youth and lifelong learners of all ages.
The Seoul Agenda has three main goals, namely: to ensure that arts education is accessible as a fundamental and sustainable component of a high quality renewal of education; to assure that arts education activities and programmes are of a high quality in conception and delivery; and to apply arts education principles and practices to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today’s world.
It is my submission that the Plan-Intwasa Festival High Schools Drama competition largely addresses or resonates with goal three above. Of the competition segments held at Mpopoma, Gifford and Townsend High schools, which I managed to attend, there were a mix of performances that were provocative, some touching and others downright off the mark to carry a tag of a play!
What made some good and others poor, one may ask? A combination of factors I would say, and chief among them were: lack of basic script-writing and directing skills among some drama teachers; bad role modelling — sub-standard drama touring schools — there seems to be a dearth of quality professional drama regularly touring schools. It is critical for children and teachers alike with potential and keen interest on drama production and presentation to have regular exposure to mainstream quality drama for role modelling and exposure to good practices.
Further, most schools lack proper performance spaces with basic equipment for professional presentation of the performing arts. Can Mpopoma and Eveline High schools, which are arguably some of the trend-setters in quality arts education, particularly in the areas of the performing arts, justify the lack of professional performance spaces or school halls if you wish, that have basic if not top-drawer stage lighting, curtains and amplifying equipment? Surely it cannot be funding but lack of appreciation of the role of arts in education.
Further, it is worrisome that there are no effective controls in place to prevent inexperienced or sub-standard arts trainers from contaminating the legacy that pioneering arts organisations such as Amakhosi and Black Umfolosi painstakingly helped to build with meagre resources during the past three decades.
The National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) is culpable in this area as they have been granting permits to unqualified or inexperienced artists to conduct arts education in schools. It is not fair in my view to expect schools to play this role as they have neither capacity nor resources to effectively play this role or better still does it not make business sense for the Department of Arts and Culture to recruit and support arts education monitors through the NACZ? Or is this not a sign of self-regulation overdue? In simple and practical terms self-regulation around arts education could mean initially starting with a code that we all sign to and register, or database of credible practitioners and organisations in the area of arts education in schools and their particular areas of specialisation. The legal and health professions offer excellent examples of going about self-regulation.
Are the current efforts by the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture an effort to domesticate the Seoul Agenda on arts education in schools? If yes, this begs further questions as to how the country strategy on the Seoul Agenda was developed because there is no known public process regarding this. Most of the teachers that I spoke to during the Plan-Intwasa Festival High School Drama Competition do not know about the Seoul Agenda on arts education!
It could be argued that the responsible minister, David Coltart, is not keen or does not have an appreciation of arts and culture or is not the right person to be thrust with providing national leadership on arts and culture. For example, the cultural policy is taking forever to complete, suffice to say with all the funding that the Department of Arts and Culture received from Treasury under the 2012 national budget, how could the department still take a begging bowl to Unesco and Culture Fund! What legacy are we creating where the Department of Arts and Culture, the NACZ and the creative civil society compete for meagre arts funding available!
For meaningful arts education in schools, the provision and generation of relevant literature is critical. This therefore begs some pertinent questions to the department on whether any arts books were part of the books distributed to schools recently under the Unicef funding?
Further, Raisedon Baya’s Anthology of Plays Tomorrow’s People is now a set book for schools. Is the ministry going to publish the plays and distribute them nationally? We are aware that the British Council is in discussion with the Ministry of Education on the promotion of Shakespeare’s plays in schools. While we value and subscribe to the 2005 Unesco Convention on the promotion and protection of cultural diversity, we take exception to Shakespeare’s or other foreign plays or other artistic work taking precedence over indigenous art and artists, particularly in the education and modelling of children, the majority, if not all, do not derive any cultural significance from Shakespeare’s plays or any foreign plays for that matter, but Stephen Chifunyise’s, Cont Mhlanga’s or Raisedon Baya’s, just to mention but three published local playwrights.
Further, how many or which artistic groups or artists are part of the official Zimbabwean delegation to the ongoing Olympics in Britain?
Now turning to NGOs such as Plan supporting rights-based arts education in school. While we value the contribution of the funding to rights-based arts education, we challenge the NGOs to adhere to fair and reasonable balance between content and form or aesthetics of producing and presenting drama. It is the rule of thumb that in order for one to produce good drama they need a script written by a competent or experienced person, the script needs to be equally directed by a competent or experienced person who in turn needs trained and talented performers to bring the story to bear.
Suffice to say writers, directors and actors collectively create for the audience. It is therefore against the norm and standard practice to disregard these imperatives. Though NGOs never seem to get it that it makes for genuine and meaningful child-centred development if the role of NGOs such as Plan is to provide funding for training in drama for example because when children have the skills and know-how of expressing themselves through drama, practically all thematic issues fall in place without compromising on the aesthetics of drama, and NGOs for their lack of either understanding or appreciation of drama aesthetics insisting on thematic dogma or propaganda which often kills creativity and the drama itself.
One does not need to mention several times not even once for an audience to know that a play is about the girl child or Aids! This simply reduces well-meaning initiatives to seemingly acts of public relations or marketing by the culpable NGOs. In all honesty and fairness what is the point of getting children to perform plays to none audience of competition adjudicators, NGO officials and fellow competitors and more so perform plays that they neither created nor directed themselves but a mere figment of teachers and NGO officials!
How does a peer school drama competition (peer in that basically the children were or often perform to fellow student competitors) engender the rights of the girl child or any other rights for that matter! Working with children around abuse and rights violations requires a holistic psychosocial support approach because often the majority of the children have suffered some form of abuse from either parents or teachers themselves. How do children tell stories of abuse by teachers when the teachers write and direct the plays?
I would conclude with a quote from Bjorn Maes: “Culture is the song, not the instrument; and we’re all in this symphony together. Culture must be regarded in its full potential scope and quality. Reducing it to a handy tool for development is grossly disregarding both culture and development. Blindly instrumentalising arts disciplines to pass development messages like bitter pills to be swallowed, is cutting both short.â€
It is about time the arts in general or arts education in particular should in fact not be left to the whims and insecurities of international donor agencies or NGOs for support. We have published plays addressing the very issues that NGOs are preoccupied with. Why not adapt these and not only promote visibility and consumption of locally written and published plays but also allow schools to work with professionally produced scripts and equally importantly contribute towards economically viable livelihoods for our writers?
Imagine if the Department of Arts and Culture would pay Baya market rates for the next three years or so for his plays! He could turn into a potential investor of one or more distressed publishing houses!