In recent years, the teaching and communication department at ARKEN in Ishøj has invited the primary school's art teachers into what they call the Creative Electives Laboratory. Here they share their innovative teaching approach, inspired by the perspectives and working methods of contemporary art, which the teachers can take with them to the students in the oldest classes, now that visual art has become an exam subject.
By Miriam Katz, The magazine Billedkunstneren #4 2024
The visual arts subject in primary schools is undergoing a transformation these years: From – roughly speaking – having been a 'toddler subject', where teaching stopped in the 5th grade, it now continues until leaving school. Today, students in 7th and 8th grade in most schools in the country can choose visual arts as one of four compulsory practical-music electives, which must be completed with an exam.
With the new status as a trial subject, which was introduced in 2019, comes a new curriculum and teaching guide. And this places new demands on visual art teachers' teaching. For example, students must learn to work experimentally with their own visual projects, and they must be able to reflect in a nuanced way on both their own work processes and on the works of art and visual cultural expressions that they encounter in class.
It requires that visual arts teachers strengthen their focus on developing students' linguistic and analytical skills. And to create a good framework for the students' experimental, image-creating work. But how do you do that in practice?
They know a lot about this at the ARKEN Museum for Contemporary Art in Ishøj, which annually welcomes thousands of children and young people from, among other things, Vestegnen's day care facilities, primary schools and youth programs in short and longer teaching courses.
A large part of the visiting children and young people come for a three-day course in what the museum calls the Laboratory for Creative Learning. Based on the experiences the museum's teachers have gained there, three years ago the development project Creative Elective Laboratory, which offers competence courses for primary school art teachers, sprouted.
"The elective laboratory stems from the fact that many of the visual arts teachers who visit us with their school classes have asked for knowledge about how they can take some of the methods we use back to school and use them in their own teaching," says Jane Bendix, education and development manager at ARKEN.
On a visit to the museum lecturers' machine room
In the elective laboratory, which has just completed its three-year project phase and is expected to go into operation this year, the museum teachers have therefore invited visual arts teachers to both teacher workshops and teaching sessions with students. All to share the experimental learning formats that the museum's teaching department has developed over the years.
During the project period of the elective laboratory, approximately 25 visual arts teachers from a total of nine Vestegns schools have participated. There are also student teachers from several visual arts teams at Copenhagen University of Applied Sciences. In addition, the School Service - knowledge center for external learning environments, by virtue of its partnership with ARKEN, has participated as a sparring partner in the project.
In the elective laboratory, experiments have been carried out with what the structure of a collaboration with a small elective subject across classes might look like. It has ended up with a model where each course takes place over two full teaching days, twice each school year. The activities have taken place partly at the museum, partly outside the schools, where the museum's art pedagogy has been put into play in visual art education for 7th and 8th grades.
"Our focus is on creating a space to work with art in that is safe for everyone. Where there are no right and wrong answers, but where everyone gets the opportunity to take part in the conversation that occurs both with, through and about art. The individual student does not have to perform, but participate in an open community where we investigate art together," says Jane Bendix.
Art education takes time
It has been important for the museum teachers that the competence course of the elective laboratory took place both at the museum and outside in the schools. And that they have been able to meet with the participants several times over time.
"Both so that we could get to know each other better, and so that we could gain a better understanding of the framework in which the visual arts teachers work on a daily basis," says Tue Løkkegaard, art mediator at ARKEN Undervisning og Formidling, who has worked together with Jane Bendix in the elective laboratory.
They quickly realized that they had to disrupt the school's timetable planning if the teaching courses they brought to the schools from the elective laboratory were to make sense:
"An ordinary art lesson lasts an hour and a half, which is not conducive to the immersive processes we work with. It's basically just enough to unpack all the tools and materials - and then pack it all down again," says Tue Løkkegaard.
Tue Løkkegaard, art mediator at ARKEN Education and Mediation, and Jane Bendix, education and development manager at ARKEN.
Good time is a decisive factor for successful art teaching, ARKENS' art teachers point out.
"Visual art requires a different space for immersion than Danish and mathematics. If the schools want to ensure that the students get the most out of the teaching in visual arts, they can, for example, combine the lessons in subject days and in that way create more coherent time. Several of the schools we collaborate with have also started to do this. Perhaps based on a realization that visual arts education takes place on different premises than the textbook subjects," says Tue Løkkegaard.
The art of talking about art
There are several focal points in the art pedagogical approach that ARKEN Undervisning has shared with the teachers in the elective laboratory. E.g:
- Process rather than product
- The collective rather than the individual
- Dialogue and reflection rather than presentation and assessment
The focus points are translated into simple measures that, among other things, create a new framework for how students can talk about art. This happens in what, in visual arts terminology, is called visual conversation.
"In our picture conversations, we experiment with how to get away from the somewhat stiff presentations where the students stand in front of their classmates and have to talk about works or pictures they have created themselves. Instead, we work with 'legs' of all kinds, both linguistic and non-linguistic, which can help to structure a conversation and create an open dialogue,” explains Jane Bendix.
"A technique that, for example, works really well in the picture conversations is what we call 'part and whole'. Here we ask the students to describe first parts of and then whole works in turn. This means that everyone comes to the pitch and gets to say something. It also creates a slowness in looking at a work. Something really interesting happens when you, as a group, systematically and slowly look at a work together without judging it," she says.
Another technique, which has been developed to talk about the students' own and each other's images, is 'the yellow string': A yellow string is placed in a circle on the floor of the classroom. The teacher or a student draws a random card from a pile of word cards and places it in the circle. It might say 'contrast', or 'perspective', 'chaos' or 'unknown'. Some words are fine art words, others are more open.
Now the students, who are divided into smaller groups, each with 4-5 pictures, must choose which picture they think best fits the word in the circle. When they have thrown the picture into the circle behind the yellow string, they have to justify why they have chosen that particular picture for that word.
In one of the courses of the Creative Elective Laboratory, teachers and students worked with Esben Weile Kjær's curation of ARKEN's collection in the exhibition BUTTERFLY! It took place partly with performative experiments in the exhibition, partly with collective image experiments at the school. PHOTO ARKEN – Museum of Contemporary Art
"This technique is about training the students to talk nuancedly about pictures. Young people's language is often very judgmental: Is the picture nice or ugly, did my picture succeed or fail. Here the students learn that you can talk about pictures based on non-judgmental criteria. And that there are many possible looks at the same picture. It's about spotting different possibilities and aspects in the picture, and being able to put them into words. Instead of judging the image – or any work – as good or bad,” says Jane Bendix.
The museum lecturers are concerned with creating an open space in which to talk about art, but openness can also be demanding, they say.
"We want to avoid hierarchies of opinion arising, where some interpretations or techniques are seen as better than others. But it is not always easy to shake the belief in authority that can exist around art, neither with students nor teachers," says Jane Bendix.
"We have had some funny situations where the art teachers have come to us after we have insisted to the students that there are no right or wrong interpretations of a work. And then the teacher says: Ok, it was great that you said that all interpretations apply, but what's in it the reality does the artist want to say with this work?” tells Tue Løkkegaard.
"It can be difficult to let go of the control that traditionally lies in the role of teacher, where you are the one who has all the answers. But we work in a learning space where we really don't have any clear answers to how a work should be understood. Instead, we are concerned with investigating what occurs between artist, work and viewer. For us, the artist's voice is always part of an equal dialogue. It is not elevated above our others, but is part of an exchange," says Jane Bendix.
Fruitful and challenging professional inspiration
In the elective laboratory, the teachers themselves have had the opportunity to try out the collective work processes used by the museum teachers.
This could be, for example, creating joint works on large sheets of paper that rotate between the participants, and where all participants alternately draw the foreground, background, color etc. And it could be structured picture conversations, where the participants, for example, discuss what is happening in the collective processes in relation to the sense of ownership over the images. And the participants' feedback has been positive, says Jane Bendix.
"The teachers are happy about the professional inspiration and exchange of experience that occurs in the laboratory. But some also express that it is a challenging process, where over time they have to get used to thinking differently before they can implement what they have learned here in their own teaching.”
The challenges are not only about scheduling and the pressured everyday life of the primary school. But also that the very approach to art teaching that the teachers encounter in the elective laboratory differs from the traditional subject understanding in the visual arts subject.
"Our teaching methods are based on the perspectives and working methods of contemporary art. Among other things, we try to break with the idea that creative processes are only about getting from a to b. Instead, we train students to work in non-linear creative processes. It may seem a bit unmanageable at times, but our experience is that there is a lot to be gained by being inspired by artists' experimental work processes," says Jane Bendix.
Image ecology in the classroom
Like many contemporary artists, she and ARKEN's teaching team see creative processes as circular, and work from a sustainability perspective. This means, among other things, that everything the students create in the elective laboratory – be it works, sketches, partial products and other material from the work processes – forms part of an ecological cycle of images, where everything can always take new forms, cross-pollinate and enter into new creative processes.
"Although we must of course be finished at some point, we are concerned that artistic processes never quite end. A work can form the basis for a performative exercise, a sketch is not only preparation for a work, but can also be used in other sketches and new processes. Everything is the seed for something new at different angles," says Tue Løkkegaard.
And the museum teachers therefore see a clear potential in using contemporary artists as teachers.
"We can only support using artists as teachers. It is super fruitful that the teaching can be influenced by the practices of contemporary art. Here in ARKEN's education department, we are also a mixed bunch with both artistic, pedagogical and academic educations," says Jane Bendix.
Contemporary art shows the way
The perspectives of contemporary art clearly permeate the pedagogy of the museum teachers.
"All our teaching is based on the museum's current exhibitions and artists' working methods. For example, when Iranian-Danish Farshad Farzankia had a large solo exhibition with us in 2021, we showed the students a series of film clips in which the artist talks about working with fragments and about disturbing his own brain in order to get to new places in his work. with a work. His way of using the word 'disrupt' was good in explaining to the students the way we teach. We use disturbances in the form of small leg spans or simple rules, which push the students' image-making processes in new, unexpected directions. It became clear to the students when they saw Farzankia's experimental working method,” says Jane Bendix.
Also in the museum's thematically curated, art historical exhibitions, there are artistic methods that can inspire new, concrete approaches in ARKEN's teaching. At the 2022 exhibition 'Women in Upheaval', the museum lecturers zoomed in on, among other things, the French artist, writer and activist Claude Cahun and her staged photographs, which she created together with life partner Marcel Moore.
Cahun's investigations into various forms of self-production became the starting point for a series of performative exercises, where the students tested selected parts of her performance techniques. Among other things, by holding up gold frames in front of their faces and making small changes to their appearance – such as putting on a bathing cap and, like Cahun, showing off without their hair as an identity marker.
Photo: ARKEN – Museum of Contemporary Art
“It was quite over the top for many of them, but the exercise only lasted one minute and everyone could do it. Something exciting happens when you experiment with micro-performances, which make the conversation with the students interesting. But we are of course aware that it must be safe to dare to come forward. Therefore, as teachers, we always carry out the exercises ourselves first to dismantle the feeling of boundary crossing that can arise in the room," Tue Løkkegaard tells us.
Jane Bendix adds:
"On the whole, we have good experience in adding a performative layer to teaching. Performative techniques work as a didactic method that can free students from some of the pressure that can be in having to stand up and be assessed. When the students are given a role where they take half a step out of themselves and express themselves as someone else, this 'now I'm up and have to present' disappears. It can be very liberating," she says.
Out with performance pressure, in with collaboration
Learning through the art, rather than about the art, runs like a common thread through all the methods the museum teachers have shared with the teachers in the elective laboratory. At the same time, they shift the focus from the individual student's performance, skill and technique to collective work and cognitive processes.
"Collective processes, such as creating joint works, provide important, new perspectives in teaching. When students, for example, practice taking an interest in other people's pictures, they discover the dialogic aspect inherent in contemporary art. That art is always a conversation about the world,” says Jane Bendix.
"Yes, and that contemporary art can be a conversation about how we are in the world – that we are also here as collective beings who depend on being able to talk and cooperate with each other," adds Tue Løkkegaard.
In this way, the conversation about art becomes a common, third place that arises in the space between teachers and students.
"We always set up very clear frameworks for what should take place in the teaching, so that we create a community that is both open and safe to be in. In this way, art also becomes a good space to work with young people's well-being," says Jane Bendix.
There is therefore much to gain from an art education with a focus on the collective. But what happens when the students have to be assessed individually for the exam?
"It's about spotting the individual responsibility in the collective processes. We train the students to be able to analyze and reflect on the experiences they make during the collaboration. And these are the reflections on which the teachers can assess the individual student for the exam," says Jane Bendix.
And what do the students say to visual art lessons, where it is neither important to be good at drawing nor to hand in clever interpretations of works of art? Jane Bendix:
"In the beginning, some of the students often find it difficult to put performance demands and perfectionism aside. But once they get used to our methods, they are usually pleasantly surprised. We really often meet students who say: 'I didn't even know that art could be something like what we work with here. And that going to school can be so much fun'”.
Kreativt Valgfaglaboratorium offers skills courses for primary school art teachers.
It was established as a development project in 2020 by ARKEN Undervisning og Formidling and is expected to go into operation this year. In the elective laboratory there is, among other things, a focus on experimenting, working collectively in visual studies and discussing images and image-making processes.
Photo: ARKEN – Museum of Contemporary Art
The purpose is to develop didactics, methods and professional approaches in the visual art elective through the use of ARKEN Undervisning's art pedagogical practice and knowledge of teaching methods. The development project was realized in collaboration with nine Vestegnsskoler and the teacher training program at Copenhagen University of Applied Sciences. The school service - knowledge center for external learning environments has been a partner in the project, which was supported by AP Møller and wife Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller's Foundation for General Purposes. Creative Electives Laboratory is an offshoot of the Laboratory for Creative Learning, where ARKEN, in close collaboration with primary schools in Ishøj, Brøndby, Høje Taastrup, Vallensbæk and Greve Municipality, uses the museum as an external learning space and develops models for how cultural institutions can help to strengthen the open school.