African Arts - an adventure in education

Abstract

In 1982 the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation published its report on The Arts in Schools: Principles, Practice and Provision in which it stated unequivocally that 'the arts have an essential place in the balanced education of our children and young people,. It went on:

We live in an increasingly multiracial and multicultural society in which we must learn to understand and respond to other ways of seeing and doing ... We are sure that, in the forms of education needed in this changing situation, the arts and principles and methods of teaching they represent, will prove to be more and not less significant than at present..

Our own experience working in this field of African arts in schools over the last two years totally endorses this view.