"At the recent national Lighting A Fire conference a question was posed of the audience. How many were artists in attendance and how many were from the education sector. The ratio was roughly 2:1. The speaker pointed out that this is a common occurance at conferences of this nature.

As early years practice and arts training comes into the spotlight in Ireland, I thought it would be a great opportunity as editor of Practice.ie for this edition to speak to representatives of Cork College of Commerce (In this article an interview with Principal Helen Ryan and childcare course co-ordinator Ann Fanning) and Mary Immaculate College, Limerick (In this article an interview with Dorothy Morrissey of the newly established META, Masters in education and the arts) to discover how the education specialists are approaching this new sectoral development.

The Colours of Water: La Baracca Theatre Company

Helen Ryan: Cork College of Commerce

The Cork College of Commerce has been in existence for over 100 years and continually evolves to meet the educational needs of the local community and beyond. It was one of the pioneers in developing Post Leaving Certificate and Further Education Courses and remains one of the largest centres of excellence in this sector with over 2000 full-time students studying at Certificate and Diploma level in the College each year."

1. CCOC was a partner on one of the first early years outreach events in 2008 as part of its centenary celebrations in association with Acting Up! and Baboró International Festival of Arts for Children. What impact did this event have on the students and creche workers at the time? (The performance was La Baracca’s Colours of Water).

This was particularly helpful to the students and the creche workers in that it raised the awareness of the role that the arts can play with babies/very young children. It also provided practical ’hands on’ experience of how arts in early years can be utilised with very young
children. It gave the participants the confidence to employ more arts activities with young babies and reaffirmed the skills that they had acquired in their basic childcare training. It generated discussion and a lively interaction which allowed participants to explore ideas and further
opportunities for development of the arts in early years.

2. CCOC hosted an international seminar on Awe and Wonder - arts in the early years in October 2011. This was opened by a Minister and attended by the Assitej International Secretary General Ivica Simic from Croatia among others. What legacy did this leave with the early childhood sector in the college?

The fact that the Minister attended was very important as it highlighted and reaffirmed the role of the college in training early years practitioners. It was wonderful to have the Assitej International Secretary General present as it reflected the universal role of arts in early years education. The international flavour of the event created an excitement and enthusiasm within the staff of the college here which will not be forgotten. It also emphasised the multidisciplinary nature of the early childhood education sector.

3. How much creative arts practice is involved in the childcare training courses at CCOC?

Creative Arts is one of the components on the early Childhood Education programme in the Cork College of Commerce. Creative Arts is actually an elective component on the Level 5 Early Childhood Education and Care Award but the college places such importance on the component that it is included in our suite of courses. In this component they cover all aspects of creative arts including arts and crafts, puppetry, mime and drama. Tutors on the mandatory component Early Childhood Education and Play also place huge emphasis on the importance of creative arts in the Early Years.

4. Are you aware of the proposed Charter for the Arts in Education which was discussed at a conference in Dublin recently?

Yes we are aware of it and we would be in favour of implementing more arts in the education sector as we are aware that research shows that students who participate in creative arts programmes have better outcomes in other subjects. It influences very positively their general development and allows for fulfilment of potential in all areas of life.

5. CCOC is the largest childcare training college in the country. In an ideal world, what would you like to see happen in terms of a partnership between the professional arts sector and the education sector for the college in the future in terms of training for trainers and students of early childhood care and education in particular?

We would like to see more cooperation between the professional arts sector and the college trainers, students and childcare practitioners. As you are aware, in childcare, continual up-skilling is vital and it is important for our trainers/students/practitioners to have access to quality arts training in order to realise the maximum potential for children in the early childhood sector both at home and abroad. More conferences, outreach events and workshops would be on our wish list for the future.

Dorothy Morrissey: Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

Dorothy Morrissey is a member of the department of arts education and physical education at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick (www.mic.ul.ie) where she lectures in drama education. She is also course leader for the department’s MA in Education and the Arts (META). She worked for many years as a primary teacher and as a provider of in-service education for primary teachers. She is particularly interested in theatre for young audiences and in contemporary performances of fairy tales in various artistic media. Dorothy is a doctoral student at the University of Bristol (UK).

1. What is your connection with the early years’ sector in particular?

As a primary teacher, I taught infant classes for seven years. As a teacher educator, I facilitate drama and occasional dance workshops focusing on the early, primary school, years. I hope to increase my involvement in the early years’ sector and I am particularly interested in developing student teachers’ awareness of, and interest in, early years’ theatre. I am hopeful that an elective module on theatre for young audiences, currently being developed, will include a component on early years’ theatre. Delivery of this module will, of course, involve collaborating with theatre artists working in the sector. I hope too that this work will enrich our MA in Education and the Arts (META) which is designed for practising teachers, artists working in education, and arts in education policy makers and administrators.

2. How much arts practice is involved directly in what you do?

Most of my teaching is on initial teacher education (primary) programmes and involves facilitating practical drama workshops. I also teach practical drama/dance/literature workshops on META. Over the past five years, colleagues and I have used the Lincoln Center Institute’s (LCI) approach to aesthetic education in some of our courses. This involves engaging in continuous inquiry into an art work (a film, a live music performance, a live theatre performance etc.) over time. LCI’s approach follows closely the processes used by artists in creating works of art; it involves the senses, the emotions and imagination as well as problem-solving skills and it comprises art making, questioning, reflection and contextual research. The aim of the approach is to cultivate aesthetic engagement by enabling students to make connections between works of art, the artistic processes engaged with and their own lives. I have also written a one woman play, Goldilocks’s Testimony, based on the experiences of professional women in workplaces and I have performed the play at academic conferences and in my drama education classes.

3. What would you consider to be the most important element of a partnership between professional artists and primay teachers?

In my view, the most important element of the partnership would be the development of collaborative working relationships between artists and teachers. I believe that the expertise of both teachers and artists is essential for planning, implementing and evaluating an ‘arts in schools’ experience that will enhance children’s aesthetic, artistic and cultural learning. Teachers bring their teaching skills and their knowledge of the children and the curriculum to the process while artists bring their artistic expertise. Furthermore, a successful collaboration would enable teachers to develop their artistic skills and artists to develop their teaching skills. And, since all partners in the process (artists, teachers and children) stand to benefit from such collaboration, it increases the likelihood of sustainability.

4. How do you see this evolving, if at all?

Of course, partnerships do not evolve overnight. They take time to initiate, nurture and grow. Often, I feel that the teacher is rendered silent and invisible in the whole artist-schools debate. Yet, in primary schools, it is the teacher who has front-line responsibility for all activities in which children engage for the duration of each school day. I think the whole partnership process in primary schools has to start by acknowledging this reality. In this context, artists are invited by teachers to add another dimension/perspective to the classroom conversations and explorations in which teachers and children are already engaged. So, in order to initiate (more) sustainable teacher-artist partnerships, more spaces for dialogue between teachers and artists need to be opened up; spaces in which stories of already successful teacher-artist partnerships can also be articulated and shared. I think the Artist-Schools Guidelines (2006) developed by the DES and the Arts Council, while containing many useful guidelines for artist-school partnerships (as the title indicates), does not acknowledge the central role played by the teacher in the primary school classroom. And, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of working artist-teacher partnerships, it does not provide guidance around the (albeit negotiable and flexible) roles and responsibilities of each of the partners. Nor does it, in my view, emphasise the pivotal importance of artist-teacher partnership at all stages of the ‘arts in (primary) schools’ experience.

5. Are you aware of the new charter on the arts and education in Ireland?

Yes, I am very aware of the new charter. And, as a member of the steering committee of the Association for Creativity and Arts in Education (ACAE), I met with the implementation group. I believe, as stated in the charter, that ‘creativity must be placed at the heart of our future as a society and a country’ (pp.3-4) and I believe in ‘placing the arts, alongside other subjects, at the core of our education system’ (p.4). I also share the commitment expressed in the charter to partnership and dialogue and to the identification and sharing of good practice and resources. Moreover, I welcome the charter’s proposed scheme, Arts Rich Schools (ARIS), to ‘incentivise and recognise’ schools that ‘make the arts a key part of school life’ (p.17). Indeed, there is strong consonance between ARIS and ACAE’s existing Creative Schools Award; an evidence-based award promoting process based approaches to fostering creativity, the imagination and the arts. And, in my view, ARIS needs further elaboration to ensure focus on the processes of arts education as well as its products.

The charter distinguishes between arts education and arts-in-education; a distinction that I consider to be unnecessary. For me, arts-in-education - described in the charter as involving ‘skilled, professional artists of all disciplines working for and with schools in the making, receiving and interpreting of a wide range of arts experiences’ (p.10) - is an integral component of arts education and not something added on to, or separate from it. Indeed, one of the aims of the arts education curriculum in primary schools is to ‘foster a sense of excellence in and appreciation of the arts in local, regional, national and global contexts, both past and present’. And, returning to a point I made earlier, it is the teacher who, in primary schools, has front line responsibility for providing a broad and balanced arts education for the children in her/his care. The primacy of the teacher’s role is not acknowledged in the charter nor is there sufficient emphasis on the quality of teacher-artist partnerships. The success, or otherwise, of the charter will hinge, however, on what happens next. And, in my view, we need to begin by creating (more) spaces for teacher-artist dialogue and for joint professional development.