Youth, Arts and Music - Case Study Example

Youth, Arts and Music Introduction Arts and music is one area where the youth are excelling in this modern world. Many young people tend to discover their talents early enough in life and their youthful years are used to nurture and develop these talents1. Many countries have discovered this and their education curricula have arts and music as a subject or course that young people are required to learn. Through it they get to identify their talents in arts and music and gain the needed exposure to develop them. Looking at the participation of the youth in arts away from formal education youth arts developed through three ways which are youth service, theater and community arts. Young people must be given opportunities everywhere in order to form the foundation of their careers in art and music2. A major avenue through which such opportunities are achieved is the formal education system. The youth may have other avenues out of formal education where they can access the opportunities they need to take part in music, opera, visual arts, dance, architecture, literature and film among other forms of art. Some of these avenues come through the projects and programs that different organizations offer. They include dedicated youth organizations such as youth choirs; youth dance groups, youth theaters, youth orchestras and youth film making. Another one is the youth and community organizations that offer arts experiences for youths as part of youth community work provision such as statutory, voluntary and diocesan youth organizations3. Another avenue is the arts organizations that have programs targeting the youth as part of arts provision. They include outreach education programs, local authority offices for arts and arts centers. There are other avenues but for these, the youth can access them through the above three avenues, through opportunities in formal education or though a manner that is independent of any organization4. They could be part of an audience of listeners, consumers of the products of arts including those directly targeting the youth, viewers and readers. Another way is the formation of the upcoming artist through mentoring schemes, bursaries, events created to develop young talents and commissions5. Youth arts organizations Youth arts organizations are dedicated to the provision of specific programs fore the youth. Such programs are youth theaters, dance ensembles, orchestras, choirs and film making groups for the youth. For the youth who take part in these programs their preferable art form plays a major role presently and in their future lives. Youth arts organizations are committed to their members becoming aesthetically formed and that their social and personal development is taken care of. A certain research reports that a review of youth dance practice in Ireland showed that the sector was concerned with artistic development among the youth because of the social and personal development opportunities brought by dance making and performance. Another important feature is the addition of public performance in the yearly program6. Another feature is the when new work is commissioned by upcoming artists in the early years of their careers. This work can be developed with the involvement of young people and it normally seeks to attain some relevance in the lives of these young people. The organizations make styles of performance and get established works that suit the interests and abilities of young people. Youth Theater groups organize plays that help the youth in their lives. They include some work that the members themselves devise. The youth in these organizations take it upon themselves to attract other young people who may not attend arts events as part of the audience. By producing work that relates to their generation they help to include the youth perspective into the wider program of arts. In these organizations experienced and skilled people in art normally mediate the experiences of the youth. They work within the guidelines of the organization. Many dedicated youth arts organizations depend on youth education and arts sectors for counsel about policies, structural support and funding. The sectors of youth and arts on the other hand depend on youth arts organizations for provision of resources, provision of expertise about service development in youth arts and access to skilled practitioners involved in youth arts. Youth arts festivals whereby the youth take part as members of the audience and makers, performers and arts creators play an important role in the development of resourceful youth arts practice. They are important since they raise the standards of arts practice, develop proper understanding of art forms and profile art for the youth and by the youth7. They also provide opportunities for development of skills and networking for adult tutors, animators and leaders. Development of festivals should be done so that they can help raise the standards of art and art form education among the youth. It is necessary to organize cross-art form festivals especially for those art-forms that have not had any events specific to the youth. Art festivals should be aimed at widening the experience of the youth and their understanding of art and make it possible for best practice to be transferred between different art forms and groups. Importance of Arts and Music to the Youth The involvement of the youth in arts and music is important because through it they develop their talents and careers. A part from this, the youth can also derive social and academic gains from their participation in arts and music. Certain studies done on this have revealed that there is an impact on social competencies, habits of the mind and personal dispositions important to the learning of arts8. In addition, research shows that the things the youth learn when taking part in arts and music can help them to understand other subjects like social studies, reading and math. When students take part in arts learning experiences, they boost their performance in other spheres of learning. In a properly documented study in which a federal database of more than 25,000 high school students were involved, researchers at the University of California discovered that those students who were active in arts and music were better performers on standardized achievement tests when compared to those students with lesser participation in arts. In addition those students with higher involvement in arts spend lesser hours watching TV, took part in more community activities, and admitted to have less boredom while at school9. The idea of transfer whereby learning in a particular area boosts learning in a different context has mesmerized cognitive scientists and those doing research in education for over a century. Many researchers hold the view that all experiences of learning have some level of transfer in life and learning within and outside the school. Nevertheless the type and extend of these transfers is still a topic of interest. Studies have shown that the impact of the transfers is a subject of research interest. Recent research also shows that the results of the transfer may accumulate over a long time and show in different ways10. Researchers are continuously exploring the difficult processes of learning and how skills and knowledge are acquired. One important line of research is aimed at measuring the benefits that come with arts learning. Included here are the efforts for developing a reliable way of assessing some if the unseen effects of arts learning which standard tests do not capture like the desire to achieve or the ability to exercise critical thinking. Better academic grades are some of the benefits that youth who involve themselves sin arts can get. Youth with a low socio economic status and a history of much participation in the arts have better academic outcomes than low socioeconomic status youth with a lower participation in the arts11. They get better grades and register higher college enrollment rates and achievement. Low socioeconomic status students with arts rich experiences in high school had an extra likelihood of 10 percent to finish a calculus course in high school than the low socioeconomic status students with little involvement in arts. The percentage was 33% vs 23%. Students with high arts involvement and low socioeconomic status in the 8th grade had a higher likelihood of having planned to pursue a bachelor’s degree than were all the students or those with low arts and low socioeconomic status. The percentages were 74 percent, 71 percent and 43 percent respectively. Studies also show that students with low socio economic status and high involvement in arts had a 15% more likelihood of joining a 4 year college compared to low arts and low socioeconomic status students12. The percentages were 41% and 26% respectively. Students with music and arts involvement in school had a higher likelihood of getting a bachelors degree. Talking about taking part in extracurricular activities in school, students with low socioeconomic status and high involvement in arts have a higher likelihood of participating in interscholastic and intramural sports and academic honor societies. Their participation in these is three times that rate of involvement of low socio economic status and low art students. Bibliography Harland, John, Kinder, Kay and Hartley Kate. 1995. Arts in their view: A study of Youth Participation in the Arts. NFER. Hickey-Moody, Anna. 2013. Youth, Arts and Education: Reassembling Subjectivity through Affect. London: Routledge. Hirzy Ellen. 2011. Engaging Adolescents: Building Youth Participation in the Arts. National Guild for Community Arts Education. Lisanne Gibson. 2001. The Uses of Art.  University of Queensland Press. Marieva Coughlan. 2002. The Participation of Young People in the Arts in Ireland. The arts council. Nilan, Julian & Germov. 2007. Australian Youth: Social and Cultural Issues. Pearson: French’s Forest. Rimmer Mark 2012. The participation and decision making of 'at risk' youth in community music projects: an exploration of three case studies. Journal of Youth Studies, 15(3), May 2012, pp.329-350. Zakaras, Laura and Lowell, Julia. 2008. Cultivating Demand for the Arts: Arts Learning, Arts Engagement and State support. Rand Corporation.  Read More