THE ARTS...CHILD AND YOUTH CARE IN SOUTH AFRICA

It happened in Kimberley in the Province of the Northern Cape. Dance and Drama rehearsals with youth in the streets. 

Exactly. 

The Arts has power to heal, develop, express and to communicate feeling, values and beliefs. It can bring about change in young people and in society.  It is a great tool for child and youth care workers in whatever settings.


Herbert Read in his book, Education Through  Art  Makes out a case for the Arts to be the very basis of learning. Everyone is and artist. Everything, he argues, can be experienced and learnt through creative activity. No need to list separate learning subjects - you know them. All - is his argument are integrated in the Arts.

I saw this this in Germany whilst on a study scholarship. In the best examples, whole classrooms were transformed into, for example, a medieval castle interior, painted, decorated, measured out, dramatised, historically researched. It was coupled with resource- based education.   

Does this have a message for child and youth care work? 

I think so... The National Association of Child and Youth Care  ( NACCW) in South Africa Biennial Youth Conferences speak of the Arts as a medium of expression. Not just of our historical past, but as an expression by young people of their immediate present. Banners, posters, dramatisation, socio-drama, costume, dance music, singing, choral singing, composed poetry,readings, all fused into a riveting presentation.  It is invariably an aha moment. A cry for personal and immediate social change, for social justice, a vehicle for a better world for all. I never fail as a child and youth care worker, but to be moved by the young people and the Arts.

It's called the emergent curriculum approach. In this approach the children and young people decide for themselves as a group ( democratically) what it is they want to say using the Arts as the medium.

"Everywhere in the world, it is accepted that students (children and young people), as a thinking and independent minded section of the population, has a right      
to freedom of thought and expression of opinion". ( Nelson Mandela. Statement made at the All-in Africa National Action Council. 3 September 1961.

 And again. 


"During the worst years repression, when all avenues of legitimate protest were closed by emergency legislation, it was the Arts that articulated the plight and democratic aspirations of our people. The affirmation was demonstrated, through drama, dance, literature, song, films, paintings and sculpture that defied the silence that apartheid sought to impose".   ( Nelson Mandela. Statement on the occasion of the opening of the Cultural Development Congress at the Civic Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa. 25 April, 1993) 

The Arts can be a political act, a conscious effort for children and young people to facilitate and participate in social change and so, a change in the very conditions that brought them into care. For we believe that there are creative social solutions.  We believe that there are various forms of communication that children and young people can use to  touch society's consciousness. ( adapted from Rini Hartman   www. Art for Social Change.Net  undated )

Taken together, these thoughts provide a well considered rational for using the Arts in child and youth care work as a way of expressing the social situation facing the children and  young people in our programmes and allowing them a voice for social change. 

 But that is not all.

An admission of the source of my conviction that the Arts be integrated into child and youth care practice! ...13 years of being a registered practicing Art Therapist in a Child Guidance and Research Centre. I'm not I'm suggesting that child and youth are workers must be Art Therapists. I am saying that the Arts have a healthy, healing developmental potential for children and young people. This is whether they be unstructured, or structured as an activity and undertaken within the scope of practice of the child and youth care worker. Making the Arts available is not a high level intervention. To structure some Arts activities similarly ..no risk. Just opportunity for expression and skills development. 

Hugely useful, is puppetry and puppet making. Like the use of personal dolls, puppets allow for the acting out of scenarios with some level of personal distance - it's the puppet talking - not me. Making hand puppets is really very simple and very satisfying for children and young people.Finger puppets, even simpler - no puppet theatre needed.

Clay is a delight. You can pull it, pound it, pinch it, push it, pummel it, prick it, stroke it and smooth it, mess your hands - and do you know what? ..you finish up with something great!

Colour talks too. The "How I feel" colours. The "What I enjoy" colours, ... NIce! 

"If you can't say it, try drawing it. You can t draw it, try acting it without words, work out some little dramatisation in your group or on your own".

 We love to sing 

The possibilities of the Arts are endless. Creativity and expression has no limits.

Defying the silence, learning, education, expression, culture, communication saying it safely,letting it go, speak, say pain talk, speak for social change. 

Does this sound like child and youth care to you. It does to me.