Companies wondering where future audiences will come from are unsure what to make of young people?s tendency to turn to the Internet as an alternative to TV, reading and going out writes Maria Evans.
Yet the Internet offers the path of least resistance to young people?s hearts. Good web-based educational material can capture this interest and convert young people into the audiences of tomorrow.
Let me start by confirming my belief in ?physical? arts education activities: nothing can beat the experience, the thrill, the insights some young people gain from them. But there are real limitations which even modest websites can help overcome.
1. Relatively few young people can benefit from physical activities. Access, cost, group size, all limit participation. A website running 24 hours a day, 365 weeks a year can extend every physical activity to every school, every child in the country.
2.The value of one-off physical events can be marred by a variety of human failings, including tiredness, peer pressure, or just having a bad day. But a website which lets students revisit the experience when they are ready permits complete participation.
3. Students are often heavily influenced by the one production of a set piece which they see, and which they tend to view as definitive. Websites can capture artistic insights into productions. Providing greater exposure to different interpretations will free students? imaginations and make them more creative in their work.
Online resources and activities are still few and far between. Young people roaming the Internet find the lack of arts material puzzling. A school project requires them to research a play: they know it?s been on, yet can find no record of it. The artistic insights which could have intrigued young audiences have vanished, and with them the chance to engage with thousands of young people. Given that this story is repeated on a daily basis, the lost audience runs into millions?.
Moreover, all teachers have to use IT in their teaching ? a real challenge for teachers of music, dance, English and drama. If arts organisations provide resources that teachers can use they win over those capable of promoting the arts to the next generation.
There are some interesting sites or web-based activities: The Globe?s online ?Adopt an Actor? scheme offers students useful insights into the rehearsal process; Polka?s WebPlay project uses the Internet to link primary schools in London and Los Angeles; and some companies preserve their education packs online. But until now there has been no single, coherent platform for such work.
arts4schools.com is a new arts education initiative, bringing together nearly 150 UK arts organisations. It?s key functions are
? to give schools easy access to information about the performing arts in one coherent site
? to develop an historical archive of creative insights into the performing arts
? to help arts organisations build or advance their online education presence.
Basic membership is free, and gives each company a dedicated page profiling their education activities. Over time this will become an archive of creative insights from numerous productions, giving young people easy access to quality materials about the arts in performance. It could be just what?s needed to persuade more young people to re-evaluate the real-life experience of the performing arts.
Maria Evans is Artistic Director of arts4schools.com. t: 020 8201 9124; e: maria.evans@arts4schools.com; w: http://www.arts4schools.com