Heritage: The Arts Build and Express Community
Written by Carol Trimble, Maine Alliance for Arts Education Executive Director and member of the planning committee for the IIC’s. Pictures by North Haven Art Teacher and visiting team member Alice Bissell.
Fish Mobile at Camden Rockport Elementary School
Few of you will be surprised to hear that students in the Camden-Rockport area have a wide variety of opportunities to experience the arts and to learn in ways that develop their imaginations. What is perhaps less well-known is how hard community members (including partnering schools, organizations, artists, and parents) work to make this happen. The teachers, administrators, parents, volunteers, artists, students, and members of organizations we met on our site visit to this Imagination Intensive Community readily acknowledge that their community has a strong history of activity in and support of the arts. They also emphasize the need they see to pass on that heritage to students. We heard that word “heritage” throughout our busy day of visits to many Camden-Rockport organizations as well as schools. The community’s success in providing a rich array of opportunities for students can not be dismissed as simply a result of affluence; this is a community that is conscious of its arts heritage and wants to make sure that continues into the future. And this is a concept that can be helpful to communities that need to build support for the arts and increase opportunities for students.
Camden Rockport Middle School hallway
This idea of heritage—of what the community has inherited and what it chooses to pass on to students—-is demonstrated in the Camden-Rockport community in many ways:
- by the elementary music teacher who wrote a musical, based on town history, for students to perform for the community;
- by the school administrators who, to ensure community support for budgeting for the arts, make sure they articulate the connection between arts education and graduation rates and achievement in other areas;
- by the years of work by educators and community members to develop community support for new high school that includes an auditorium the entire community can be proud of—and make frequent use of;
- by the high-school music teacher who ensures that students contribute to the community by including performances for community events in course requirements;
- by Youth Arts (a long-time community organization partnering with schools in Camden-Rockport to provide arts education) and the school staff and community members who, when an expansion to their elementary school didn’t qualify for Percent for Arts funds, worked to find a way to fund and create a work of art for the school’s 2-story lobby. The result: a stunningly beautiful hanging sculpture/mobile of schools of fish created by students under the direction of community artists and staff;
- and by so many other examples we observed of school arts staff, community organizations, artists, parents and other individuals, all of whom see the value of their community’s heritage as an arts rich community and who want to make sure that heritage is passed along to the next generation.
Camden Hills Regional High School Jewelry class
And this is a strategy that can be adopted by any community—affluent or not, with strong arts support or not. Any community can begin at any time to look at its heritage in the arts, or its heritage connected to or expressed by the arts. Any community can begin to ask such questions as:
• Which of our elders plays instruments or have old songs to share?
• How has design—of things like boats, buildings, or quilts—affected the community over the years?
• What is it about the beauty of the community that our residents cherish?
• How does the community, or could the community, express its history or values through the arts?
• What are the ways in which community members demonstrate their creativity?
Monica Kelly, Bay Chamber
Learning from the example of the Camden-Rockport Imagination Intensive Community, arts education advocates everywhere can help their own communities recognize the heritage that is worth recognizing and passing on—and to find ways to do that through arts education.
The project is being conducted by the Maine Alliance for Arts Education and the Maine Department of Education. The project is supported in part by a grant from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Betterment Foundation and the Maine Arts Commission supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
