Arts Are Basic is an aesthetic education program for Nebraska students and teachers. Arts Are Basic provides experiential workshop training for teachers through exploration of carefully selected works of art and live performances. Arts Are Basic is a program of the UNL Hixson-Lied College of Fine & Performing Arts, and collaborates with teachers, schools and school districts. AAB is a member of the International Association of Institutes for Aesthetic Education.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln created an office of educational outreach in 1988 in anticipation of the opening of the Lied Center for Performing Arts. One of the primary programs begun as a direct result is Arts Are Basic, started in 1989 under the direction of Kit Voorhees, coordinator of educational outreach for the College of Fine and Performing Arts. The program involves forming partnerships with school districts throughout Nebraska to provide the AAB philosophy and methodology of aesthetic education to teachers and their students.
A commitment to inquiry and process as a way of learning is primary to Arts Are Basic. A move toward participatory learning and away from what John Dewey called 'spectator knowing' is the basis of the teacher training in Arts Are Basic. The 'text' used is a work of art in the performance disciplines of dance, music and theatre, and in the visual arts.
How the program works
The Three Parts of the Program
1. A summer workshop taught by a team of specially trained master teaching artists, during which they guide participating teachers to become more comfortable with the arts and give direction in structuring students' classroom experiences.
Following attendance at the summer workshop, Arts Are Basic participating teachers meet in August as individual school teams to develop comprehensive aesthetic education goals.
Teams select the disciplines to be studied during the subsequent school year and plan their unit of study so that the art experience will fall somewhere in the middle of the unit.
Each first-year AAB teacher is expected to teach two units of study within the academic year following the summer workshop. In subsequent years it is expected that each veteran AAB teacher will teach at least one unit of study per academic year. The "text" for each unit of study is the selected performance or works of art previewed at the summer workshop.
2. Units of study taught collaboratively during the academic year by AAB-trained teachers and teaching artists. These units of study guide students through a minimum of nine lessons in which they experience the creative process through an exploration of elements that are integral to the work of art serving as the text. Each unit of study is written to serve curricular needs of individual classrooms in other subject areas such as social studies, reading, language arts, science, math, etc.
3. Attendance at the performance (text) or viewing the visual art works selected for study. The work of art is experienced in the middle of the unit of study.
