From the chapter ‘Education‘
Jo Rhodes, Dance artist, creative consultant and founder of Challenge 59 and the Co:Lab Collective
One summer’s day in 1999 I was celebrating achieving, much to the disbelief of some of my teachers, grade As in all of my A Level subjects. While gathered for a photograph with a local journalist, I vividly remember being pulled out of the frame at the last minute by the deputy headteacher who told me that dance wasn’t ‘deemed to be a credible subject’. I brushed it off and went to celebrate. My dad ‘joked’ that I should have gone to study law. I often wondered if I’d made the right choice – was it frivolous to pursue dance? It would only be years later that I would understand the evidence behind why dance, and engagement in arts and cultural activities, are truly vital to a child’s education, not least forgetting it being a human right[i] as well as an article in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).[ii]
I have had the privilege of working in a variety of contexts in dance education and community environments. Specific commissions have included increasing boys’ attainment, supporting those with behavioural difficulties, addressing poor mental health, improving literacy standards, as well as working with victims of knife crime. I have sat on steering committees with drug action teams, served on a Women’s Aid Board, and worked with public health. As well as being a lead artist for the Royal Opera House’s national dance programmes, I founded a social enterprise called Challenge 59, which explores psycho-social health through dance in schools. We co-create student films about local health issues, and in 2019 we won a Global Education innovation award.
I believe wholeheartedly in a cultural entitlement for every child, not as an added extra, but as a core part of the curriculum. In this way we make for a more equitable society, introducing children to new ways of doing and thinking about things, new experiences and people, opening new possibilities and raising aspirations.
Let’s start with dance
Arts enhance our subjective well-being; positive emotions (affective well-being), life satisfaction (evaluative well-being) and our sense of meaning, control, autonomy and purpose (eudemonic well-being).[iii] As an art form, dance is uniquely placed yet undervalued in the education system. Physical activity aids self-efficacy, mastery and our perceived ability to cope.[iv] With the connection between mind and body, embodiment of feelings, thoughts and ideas, it is hard to match. When we connect with our bodies, we become more perceptive and receptive[v] to ourselves and to the world around us.
Dance has known physiological benefits, including muscular-skeletal functioning. Dance can support healthy weight, reduce daily anxiety and stress, as well as play a role in mood management. It can change behaviours and attitudes and increase our understanding of specific themes explored through dance. Dance also fosters social and emotional development. In one project I led exploring teenage risky behaviours, there were three young people whose stories shared a commonality:
- Child A had been at the school for only a week having relocated following a bereavement of their parent. The teacher reported that, following an eight-week dance project, they ‘positively oozed confidence and had formed very strong, immediate social bonds’.
- Child B’s parents had been contacted in reference to truancy in physical education lessons. This child had issues with body image. Following an eight-week dance project, ‘not only has this child’s attendance been 100 per cent since, but they now spend their lunchtime teaching dance to younger students and staying after school’.
- Child C had been excluded from lessons due to poor behaviour. With a history of trauma, they struggled in classroom settings. Following an eight-week dance project this child articulated to an audience member (a commissioner from the council) why the project had been so important, managing to secure a term’s worth of funding for a dance artist to remain in the school.
When facilitated well, the shared experience of a creative process and collective practice elicits a sense of belonging through the building of a safe space. It enables individuals to achieve new things and grow in self-awareness and confidence, resulting in better sense of self-worth.[vi] One participant who engaged with Challenge 59 recalls: ‘I felt really lucky to be here and be as good as I never knew I could be.’ Another outcome surfaced through an academic evaluation of Challenge 59 by the Physical Culture, Sports and Health Research Group at the University of Bath, and reiterated in other studies,[vii] shows that dance can develop resilience to deal with change – and this matters enormously as today’s young people represent a generation who will experience change on an unprecedented scale.
Dance aids learning in the classroom too, with improvements to attention, memory, mental maturity, school readiness and even hand–eye coordination.[viii] I supported one school to teach geography through dance, and the teacher summarises students’ ability to ‘recall, articulate and understand’ the vocabulary and topic, as well as seeing increased contributions in class. I was once reflecting on a dance lesson with Year 1s. A five-year-old boy put his hand up and said ‘Today I remembered who I am. I can be myself more when I move’. I watched as the teacher’s mouth fell open and asked why she looked shocked. She told me that the boy hadn’t spoken to a teacher in five months and was completely non-verbal. She describes how,
It’s so important for the development of children – to express themselves creatively – and I feel really strongly that so many children do not fit into the rigid curriculum, that maybe they are not thriving at reading or thriving at maths. But if all children were given the space to express themselves in some way, that’s the key for health. (Chloe Vinnecombe, teacher)[ix]
The vitality of the arts
Creative processes offer unique opportunities and skills to learn – skills not limited to the arts, but beneficial across the board as life-long skills and in multiple fields.
The Pederson Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University runs an Arts and Minds Lab. Through neuro-aesthetics they are using brain imaging, bio and scientific feedback to understand how humans respond to the arts.[x] They found that the arts engage our brains in novel ways, tapping into emotions and making us feel good. As Susan Magsamen, Founder and Executive Director of the Lab says, ‘the human brain is uniquely wired for art. Whether we behold or create, the arts change our brains. They can make us happier, healthier and smarter.’[xi]
The arts:
- help us to imagine alternative futures. Stories can illustrate ideas not captured by traditional data,[xii] helping us to gather multi-faceted knowledge;
- foster thriving communities by bringing diverse views that span generations, cultures and groupings;
- take us ‘beyond cognitive ways of knowing’.[xiii] They evoke emotional, visceral responses and involve our sensory system in different ways;
- build empathy through shifting perspectives, opening up new insights;
- change concepts of what it means to fail or succeed;
- show improvements in mental capacity, resilience, self-esteem, cognitive capacity and emotional intelligence. Such benefits can yield considerable fiscal savings.[xiv]
Ownership and voice
Challenge 59 is a programme not ‘for’ young people but designed ‘by’ and ‘with’ them. I wanted them to have true agency and ownership in what they shaped, what they wanted to say, and in which roles they felt best placed to contribute. I wanted them to feel that their actions could make a difference. I learned that when young people own the process, they engage deeper. When they set the values, they are more likely to behold them. Where they shape projects from the start, the retention and impact can be stronger.
I have seen it as my duty to foster safe, conducive environments that enable co-creation with young people: offering choice, seeking permission, inviting autonomy, embracing risk and challenge, finding relevance and resonance in their worlds. Real world learning, empowering them to lead and harnessing their agency. Co-creation also means bringing multiple sectors and disciplines together – education, health, arts, local government. These partnerships can help participants play roles beyond the life of projects and have a voice in local communities.
Call to action
In Challenge 59’s project evaluation, 78 per cent of children wanted more access to artistic and cultural activities.[xv] Teachers told us that if they don’t access this in school, many never will. The arts are often side-lined with teachers having less capacity to explore anything beyond the traditional emphasis and rigour placed on academic subjects. Yet we know that intelligence is diverse and that children learn in different ways.
Arts must be deemed as a necessity, and not as a luxury, with schools being afforded the opportunity, capacity and resources to put creativity as central to their teaching and learning systems:
- Opportunity: Teachers should have the autonomy from regulatory bodies to co-create arts and creative thinking projects, without stretching their already limited time.
- Capacity: Support teachers to host 20 per cent weekly discretionary core time to explore creative activities, with no added pressure to ‘catch up’ on ‘lost’ academic time, but recognising the value of this across multiple outcomes.
- Resources: Afford teachers the training experiences to nurture their own curiosity and creativity. Fund the arts so that schools can collaborate with local artists and build thriving communities.
Young people need a chance to discover their own ideas and talents, understand the world and their place within it, and unearth what they care about and why they care. In turn, they are empowered and motivated to learn. Their differences become points of interest, not barriers. Their expressions, representations and findings will speak directly to communities and policy makers, to ensure the evolution of our educational system is fit for a generation with different cultures, norms and realities than before.
Notes
[i] UN (United Nations) (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
[ii] UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) (1989) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 31, www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights
[iii] Fancourt, D. and Finn, S. (2019) What Is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-being? A Scoping Review, Geneva: World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe.
[iv] Ings, R., Crane, N. and Cameron, M. (2012) Be Creative, Be Well: Arts, Wellbeing and Local Communities, An Evaluation, Arts Council England, www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Be_Creative_Be_Well.pdf
[v] Balta Portoles, J. (2021) Dance and Well-being: Review of Evidence and Policy Perspectives, European Dance Network, www.ednetwork.eu/uploads/documents/59/EDN_Dance%20%26%20Well-being%20Full%20Publication.pdf
[vi] Crickmay, U., Stancliffe, R., Jobbins, V., Smith, S., Chappell, K. and Redding, E. (2021) Dance, Health and Wellbeing: Debating and Moving Forward Methodologies, Exeter: University of Exeter, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, and Dance in Devon, https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofsocialsciencesandinternationalstudies/education/research/centres/cencse/2021HUMS002_Dance,_Health_and_Wellbeing_Report_v3_FINAL.pdf
[vii] Balta Portoles, J. (2021) Dance and Well-being: Review of Evidence and Policy Perspectives, European Dance Network, www.ednetwork.eu/uploads/documents/59/EDN_Dance%20%26%20Well-being%20Full%20Publication.pdf
[viii] All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing Inquiry (2017) Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing, The Short Report, www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry/Publications/Creative_Health_The_Short_Report.pdf
[ix] Jo Rhodes Dance: Challenge 59 (2018) [YouTube video], www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJhUd34BaWw
[x] Johns Hopkins International Arts + Mind Lab (no date) Google Arts & Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/johns-hopkins-international-arts-mind-lab
[xi] BrainFacts.org (2020) ‘The artistic brain: A neuroaesthetics approach to health, well-being, and learning’, Webinar, www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0iKFxP74Gs
[xii] Brody, A. (2021) Youth, Voice and Development. A Research Report by the British Council and Changing the Story, Leeds: University of Leeds, www.changingthestory.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/110/2021/02/Youth-Voice-and-Development-February-2021-2.pdf
[xiii] van der Vaart, G., van Hoven, B. and Huigen, P.P.P. (2018) ‘Creative and arts-based research methods in academic research. Lessons from a participatory research project in the Netherlands’, Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(2): 19.
[xiv] Ings, R., Crane, N. and Cameron, M. (2012) Be Creative, Be Well: Arts, Wellbeing and Local Communities, An Evaluation, Arts Council England, www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Be_Creative_Be_Well.pdf
[xv] Depper, A., Ni Shuilleabhain, N. and Fullagar, S. (2018) Challenge 59 Evaluation Research Report, Bath: University of Bath.