Page 13 - The story of the Art of Learning

Studies conducted on programmes where artists have been in schools for a long time, e.g. Cambridge University’s report The Impact of Creative Partnerships on the Well-Being of Children and Young People and Nottingham University’s Report The Signature Pedagogies Project shows that when artists come into school, cooperation, feelings, use of the body, movement, play and risk taking, are central parts of the work for the pupils. By working in this way students get to use their whole selves in the activities. The studies point out that students who work with artists in the school are both physically, socially, emotionally and intellectually engaged.
It therefore seems reasonable to think that artists and arts activities can be a key to create a framework in which students are physically, socially, emotionally and intellectually engaged, which in turn is precisely what Diamond claims, among other things, is required for the EF of the brain to be developed effectively, and for the students to utilize their capacity to learn - in school as well as in life in general.
Through this project, we have been investigating whether this interconnection has real substance. We have also created a framework and a methodology that can be reused, re-tested, thus making it possible for others to replicate and help investigate this field even more closely.
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