Performing Arts Educators as Collaborators

In the performing arts, artists collaborate in creating new work. Collaboration is a vital and indispensable process. This suggests that the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole, because the work that emerges has been nurtured by individual artists who have responded to each other as the creative process unfolds.

Artists as educators have a special opportunity to include the entire curriculum of the school since art embraces the sum total of human experience. Therefore history, literature, social studies (cultural, political, geographical), and the sciences provide exciting materials to be explored and expressed through artistic creation.

Though artists can seize this creative, collaborative opportunity, we should remember that most educators have not had the same experiences in collaboration that are a natural part of creating as performing artists. Most teachers have been trained to focus on their discipline and often guard what they may regard as intrusion on their territory. Yet, there is a gathering force on the cultural scene that celebrates sharing as an important, indispensable value. This is at the heart of the Web 2.0 technology which stresses creative response, and making meaning through interaction.