?Creative and cultural education? is on everyone?s lips. But what does it mean in practice? Neil Hoyle considers the evidence.
Having risen through the strata of Whitehall since the National Advisory Committee on Creative & Cultural Education (NACCCE) produced All Our Futures last year, the concept of creative and cultural education has recently emerged in the Department for Media, Culture & Sport?s green paper Culture & Creativity: The Next Ten Years.
For those of us who live and work in the arts, it is vital that this whole area should receive educational recognition, since creativity and culture are intrinsic to involvement with any artistic activity. But can creativity be cultivated, or culture be created, through an educational process? Ought we to use education to shape our culture, or to reflect it? And what can the role of music in the curriculum tell us about the wider application, across other subjects, of the qualities which make it a distinctive creative and cultural experience?
Beyond the arts
Creativity is not, of course, confined to the arts. Anyone who knows a fine mathematician or scientist is aware that their thought processes can be at least as creative as those of artists. Imaginative leaps play as great a part in solving problems such as Fermat?s Last Theorem as in applying paint in a novel way, or inventing a new sound-world. Moreover, creativity is a value-free thing. It is like strength, or intelligence, or inventiveness. It can be applied as easily to evil ends as to good. Drug dealers and paedophiles can be astonishingly creative in furthering their aims: the casualties are irrelevant. What we may be talking about, therefore, is simply the acquisition of a set of techniques or skills.
So we need a context. But the idea of ?culture? does not offer much of a lifeline. It is a label for the background against which creativity takes place. In NACCCE?s quasi-sociological terms, culture represents ?the shared values and patterns of behaviour that characterise different social groups and communities?.
This, however, is an analytical rather than practical definition. So how can we move from the acquisition of techniques to their beneficial application, and from the descriptive to the prescriptive - as we must, if we are to devise a worthwhile curriculum? The answer may lie in our readiness, or willingness, to articulate the values which must guide creativity and underpin culture if the process is to have a beneficial effect.
Values and morals
This question must be faced up to if we are to make creative and cultural education work properly. Yet the consultation documents and reports are silent, or at best reticent, on the subject. The NACCCE report?s four challenges ? economic, technological, social and personal ? are largely technical in nature. That is not surprising. Values are philosophically difficult and politically controversial.
Many practitioners will say that art of any kind inevitably embodies cultural statements of a socio-economic kind. But can the arts make moral statements? The Victorians certainly thought so. The self-conscious morality of, say, the Gothic Revival was deliberate. The 20th century was embarrassed by such theatricality. But in the 21st we may be more ready to embrace Victorian art as the value-rich expression of a hugely wealthy, outwardly confident yet naggingly insecure culture.
Many composers have thought so, too. It could be argued that their treatment of their material displays the moral qualities of respect, integrity and grace. They show respect for the medium they are using, while at the same time testing it to its limits. Could these be starting points for creative values? They are certainly not confined to the ?Western Classical Tradition?: though they find a powerful expression there. If you probe the implications of this harmonic progression or that combination of sonorities, within the supple yet strong framework of fugue or sonata form, are you not showing creative inquisitiveness combined with cultural respect? As opposed to cultural indifference and creative disrespect, which some might say are the hallmarks of a society dominated by technology and entertainment, production processes and consumerism?
We might, therefore, consider whether respect in conceptualisation, integrity in realisation, and grace in execution might help to guide our creativity and shape our culture.
Unique identity
On a more practical level, we need to ensure that while seeking to promote common elements which could support the educational process, we do not lose sight of their distinctiveness. For example, music as a subject is comfortably ensconced within the national curriculum. This is as it should be. But the price is heavy. It needs specialist teachers; there are not enough. It needs instruments to be taught; money is too short. It needs to be inspiring; but the curriculum is acquiring a formulaic, tick-box quality.
This makes it problematical. So the danger is that music may be rolled up into some wider, umbrella subject. It has managed to escape being lumped into ?performing arts?. There is a risk that ?creativity and culture? may serve as the new catch-all. The vogue for ?joining up? has its uses. But it also entails a loss of identity. ?Creative and cultural education? should not become some kind of Trojan horse, by which the place of music, or of any other art form, as a unique and individual experience, is subverted. For then we would truly be heading into a value-free zone.
Neil Hoyle is Chief Executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, e: membership@ism.org.
This article represents a personal view, since the ISM is currently considering its public stance on various aspects of music education.