This excellent film provides clear rationales for why sustaining visual arts programming in public education venues ought to be an issue of public concern. Using compelling statistics and anecdotal excerpts, it gives insight into student lives as sociological case histories offering self-actualizing transformation via the arts. I think this film may be a particularly appealing option as a demonstration for potentially hostile audiences of program administrators, school boards, law makers, and those components of the educational community concerned with return on resource investment, and the concrete, material aspects of resource allocation and educational programming for a well- reasoned justification of the arts as instrumentalist tools in the larger service of a quality education. Of course, the arts are much, MUCH more than mere incentive-inspiring instrumental tools, however, arts programs must be funded first and foremost in order to generate the possibility of ANY likely potential impact on educational or social outcomes. The integration of works throughout the film that were actually generated by students engaged with the program is a brilliant move (particularly its musical score!). This documentary offers a truly compelling argument for how to enhance local communities through employment of the arts as civic learning tools.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:03:05 +0000