1 Art That Reveals Hope
Fig 1:Water colour #2. Wassily Kandinsky, (1911)
In 2011 the Scottish philosopher Alastair McIntosh curated a conference entitled ‘Kandinsky in Govan’. Govan was, and is still, a part of Glasgow that ranks among the most economically deprived areas in Europe. This was the geographical cultural focus of the conference, to make things better. Keynote speakers included leading art experts and the Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, The aim was to reveal how art can speak positively in places of poverty today.
The conference was hosted by community groups that suffered from high unemployment and many social problems, but which retained a powerful community spirit and much artistic talent. For example, since 2001 Plantation Productions, a registered charity, has delivered a wide range of arts and media activities and events in the south-west area of Glasgow. The objective has been to provide opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to benefit from engaging in the creative arts, where access to such services may otherwise be limited. The projects were aimed at delivering outcome-based programmes to increase the life chances of people facing disadvantage; improve opportunities for families and communities and raise the profile of the area they serve.
In the long history of Govan ‘Kandinsky in Govan’ could be seen as just another top down, short term, charitable initiative. But its novel aspect was an attempt to embed arts reasoning to express sustainability. The importance of Wassili Kandinsky, (1866-1944), in this process is that he was one of the inventors of abstract art (perhaps more accurately, non-representational or object-free art). In 1911 he produced the first abstract watercolor that concentrated on colors and shapes free from the usual subjects or objects of the outside world (Fig1).
Kandinsky writes:
“It has been said… that art is the child of its age. Such an art can only create an artistic future, which is only a child of the age and cannot become a mother of the Future. She is transitory and to all intent dies the moment the atmosphere alters which nourished her. The other art, that which is capable of educating further, springs equally from contemporary feeling, but is at the same time not only echo and mirror of it, but also has a deep and powerful prophetic strength.”
The ‘other art’ is abstraction, which he saw as a language that was not only capable of expressing deeper truths but also of communicating them to all the senses. Abstraction applied arts’ reasoning to help draw forth a more sustainable and humane world. In particular, Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode and language to express the “inner necessity” of people. ‘Inner necessity’ is a major principle of art dealing with the foundation of forms and the harmony of colours. Kandinsky defines it as the principle of the efficient contact of form and colour with the human imagination to embed and convey universal human emotions, ideas and values. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal of inner necessity with the world for the betterment of society. He realised he was placing new demands on his viewers, declaring that ‘an evolution in observance was necessary’. This meant the spectator had to take part in the creation of a meaning for the work, almost as if in a mystic ritual. In other words, the role of ‘Kandinsky in Govan’ was to acknowledge and apply abstract art as a social service to build an innovative cluster of learning, research and industry. The long-term objective was to stimulate community engagement with the future of Govan starting with the arts, inspiring social change to make it a more attractive place to live, visit and work. This had to begin with providing proactive, ‘go to spaces’ for people in areas characterized by poor availability of good work who want to discuss how to build good work which binds communities as one. In this respect, McIntosh wrote in The Guardian.
“I hear people yearning for what Kandinsky saw as prophetic art. Art that reveals hope. Art that breathes the flow of life into the veins.”
2 Spiritual Activism
Matt Carmichael and Alastair McIntosh, in their book ‘Spiritual Activism: Leadership As Service’ use the expression ‘spiritual activism’ (2015) to mean the spiritual underpinning of action for social and ecological justice.
“It is an underpinning, because it is not sufficient to think of spirituality – that which gives life, – as an optional “dimension” or “element”. If activism is not grounded in spirituality it cannot be sustained in the long run: we either burn out or sell out as the oil of life runs low. We need replenishment from the wellheads of life itself. No matter what religious tradition we may or may not be coming from, this re-sourcing is a question of depth psychology and, we argue, ultimately one of spirituality’.
In October 1911 Kandinsky had gathered his ideas to promote spiritual activism in a little book that he called “Über das Geistige in der Kunst” – usually translated as ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’. Until the invention of abstraction artists were concerned with depicting human physicality. Physicality is a noun that defines the physical body and the needs to make connect with the body through exercise, meditation, massage, dancing, eating and drinking, or sexuality
Spirituality is a broader concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience, something that touches us all. People often describe their spirituality simply as a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness with people and nature.
Spirituality is a noun. It defines thoughts and beliefs about how we should think, feel, or behave about a particular group of people, an activity, a time, or a place. It goes with the claim that abstract art frees our brain from the dominance of reality. Rather than trying to figure out what the painting looks like, just allow yourself to be taken in by it. See what emotions, sensations or memories emerge. Let your eyes relax and travel around the piece without expectation. Examine the colors, forms, materials, surface, and how they interact with each other and produce the third dimension. Take your time. Let the work “speak” to you, enabling it to flow within its inner states. Create new emotional and cognitive associations, and activate brain-states that are otherwise harder to reach. This process is rewarding as far as it enables the exploration of yet undiscovered inner territories of mental spirituality that generate our values.
What we value exerts an important influence on our behaviour. Intrinsic values are those which are inherently rewarding; such as creativity, social justice and connection with nature. Extrinsic values are centered on external approval or rewards; for instance wealth, social status, self image and personal security. We’re each motivated by all these values to some degree and our dominant personal values can change through our lives..
These are just some of the ways in which people can express and cultivate their spirituality where making and viewing abstract art is the catalyst.
- relate to friends, family, and neighbours in ways that give and receive love, support, kindness, guidance, loyalty, and forgiveness;
- Express yourself creatively or artistically (e.g., woodworking or sewing, writing poetry or making music, painting or sculpting);
- appreciate visual or performing arts (e.g., attending a concert, visiting an art gallery, or going to a movie);
- read books and engage in conversations about the meaning of life;
- Pay attention to the movements of your emotional life, the stirrings of the spirit evident in sadness, longing, love, anxiety/fear, anger, joy, pride, hope, and compassion;
- enjoy the natural world (e.g., gardening or hiking, watching songbirds or sunsets, traveling to scenic places, spending time at a cottage, savoring the first snowfall or spring buds;
- enjoying comedy and humour (e.g., light-hearted banter in everyday conversation, the capacity to see the joke in life’s discouraging moments, or comedies on the stage or in books or movies);
- trying to live ethically, by integrating justice and fairness, peace-making, or green practices into their lives.
Love, trust, and forgiveness are important in your search for meaning within relationships. You grow spiritually as you learn to do these things:
- love and care for yourself, express compassion for others, delight in the natural and human-made worlds, and cherish your place and participation in the web of life;
- trust your intuitions and conscience, develop trustworthy relationships, trust that meaning can be found in every moment and place of your life, discern whom you can trust, and trust that the universe (or higher entity) is friendly no matter what happens;
- forgive yourself for failures and wrongdoing, seek justice when you have been abused or wronged, let go of the desire for revenge when you have been hurt, accept that in the big picture you are accepted and valued just as you are.
3 Adaptable Blogging Clusters
There are currently no real grassroots spaces, institutions or methods to enable people to talk about their future of work, as individuals looking to change their lives, or as members of a community looking for a sustainable future. This hampers meaningful involvement in the design of work futures and is probably the reason why past top down community initiatives, like the ones in Govan, have failed to take root . However, we now live in a world driven by social media, there is no escaping it. So ignoring social media’s potential to advance and enhance adaptive bottom up communication is a dangerous oversight.
This potential can be realised by the formation of blogging communities. These are groups of bloggers formed around a central idea, commonality or interest. Such communities exist to help writers connect around shared characteristics and blog topics, offering them a chance to grow together and learn from one another’s experiences. A suitable mantra is “all failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation”.
We are at the beginning of using blogging for social and educational purposes. Blogs allow others to easily interact and converse in a public setting. They allow Internet users to communicate more easily than most websites, through tools such as comments, trackbacks and social network bookmarking. Interaction is the key to building a successful blogging platform as the go-to places for spiritual activism. In this connection, the Adaptable Blogging Cluster (ABC) (Fig 2) has been established on the Google Blogger platform by International Classrooms On Line to exemplify the data basing logic of a citizen’s environmental network
Fig 2 A blogging system using Google Blogger
The ABC is a group of organisations, families and individuals signed up independently to Google Blogger. They create free blogs and posts and can invite comments on the posts. It is an adaptive micro learning, tool where people and organisations can upload authored information packages and download selected bite size pieces of content according to their ability level.
4 Purposes Of An ‘ABC’
An ABC should:
• provide support to those who want to undertake career transitions, working with and promoting adult education and work placement opportunities with skills providers and local businesses.
• disseminate information about how local and national government shapes the futures of work. This is a precursor to residents effectively engaging in opportunities to shape their collective work future and the architecture and infrastructure that supports it.
• provide space for community led dialogue about how to build futures of work which match the community.
• ensure a strong level of youth participation in conversations about the future of work.
The role of public art reflects a community and its surroundings working to cultivate a cultural identity by setting a community apart and attracting people to its uniqueness. Artwork of any kind helps express a community’s values and creates an elevated sense of awareness for community members and visitors. The special role of abstract art is to encourage the brain to respond in a less restrictive and stereotypical manner, exploring new associations, activating alternative paths for emotions, and forming new creative links in the brain. Therefore, abstract art will always remain popular and current because it is not defined by the artist, the time in which it was created or a subject. Abstract art is emotionally and aesthetically malleable according to the needs of its makers and viewers. In other words every community should ‘Go Kandinsky and create a citizen’s environmental network’.(CEN)
The following three ideas for CENs could provide the basis for ABC solutions,
(ii) The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP), first published in 1994, proposes a national (CEN) consisting of groupings of schools, communities and individuals to celebrate local nature sites. The Plan suggests that local nature can be protected and promoted in many ways; through the media, tourism and local Government policy. In the longer term it might also reflect the growing interest in building design in harmony with local landscape, materials and traditions.
The Government’s idea was that a CEN could help mobilize the community and individuals as a collective devoted to local conservation management. In particular, it could emphasize the role of biodiversity in local culture and foster personal understandings of being at one with nature. The BAP states that Government will continue to work with voluntary bodies, Local Agenda 21, and business and will vigorously promote the schemes for which it is directly responsible. In addition the BAP says that Government will aim to increase awareness of environmental issues, including conserving and enhancing biodiversity, enlisting support and commitment. These initiatives can take a variety of forms. They may be led in some instances by a local authority, in others by voluntary groups, the Chamber of Commerce, local churches and so on. The BAP goes on to say that the action taken could include round table discussions of local problems and opportunities, public awareness campaigns and practical projects.
For England the idea was that the Department of the Environment would select a small number of voluntary groups, institutions, and consultancies and invite them to tender for a commission to act as a central secretariat to this process. The secretariat would build a register of the local initiatives and put people in touch with each other – creating an informal and varied Network. These schemes did not materialize.
(ii) After the 1992 Environment Summit thousands of young people from nearly 100 countries worked together summarising the outcome as a book entitled ‘Resque Mission Planet Earth’, lavishly illustrated with their artwork and writings. In the section called Getting It Together they described their aims and aspirations for a global network of youth Fig 3.
Fig 3 A global democracy of Youth.
They described their vision as follows
“The first thing to do is to select issues not representatives. That way, we can all choose what we want to talk about, after which the question of who does the talking is less important. The first place to organize is in our schools. Each Rescue Mission will start with a conference where we would decide the issues and elect a small action council to see things get done. Like the children’s councils in France, we will have regular access to local government and work with them, perhaps to organize the Local Agenda 21.
With experience at the local level, we’ll be ready to ask for access to state governments.
Representatives from all local councils in our state, region or province will take priority issues decided by local conferences and discuss them at a state conference, again, electing a council to see that things get done. This council would work with state governments to make sure things get done. The final goal is to move on to national, continental and international levels – a step-ladder the things that concern you and me can be carried to the highest levels of power. This is the kind of structure we need to make the Rescue Mission work.
The key to it all is keeping in touch with each other. This is hard to do with the language differences, distances, phone bills etc. The solution is to set up a series of Youth Centres around the world, run by young people from different countries. Their job would be to help set up and promote the Action Councils and to keep in touch with each other. The Rescue Mission will be promoted chiefly through the many existing eco-groups, scouts, guides etc. The Youth Centres will simply promote and network their work and success around the world. Children and governments in the rich world must help pay for centres to be set up in developing countries. Young people from rich and poor countries will work together to making each centre like a youth United Nations – a place where anybody can get the information they want on global problems. It would also be a place where local young people can meet, hang out and chat. Working there for 6 months to a year should be an option to replace National Service. Al Gore sees the Rescue Mission as a way of collecting eco-information. Many of us do that already and it would be good to network that information globally. But this structure could do other things, especially help developing countries. If Mr Gore is serious about partnership, we hope that he will sit down and hear our ideas as well.
That means access. Something we’ve never had. Sure we’ve had photo-opportunities: politicians standing surrounded by kids, or kissing babies. Now we need them really to listen to us. The day could be on different days in different countries but once a year, perhaps on the International Day of Peace (3rd Tuesday in September), we would gather all the results and tell the general public what our leaders have said – how far they kept the promises they made to us the previous year.
Who can participate? Anyone under the age of 18. Non-voters. Older people will be welcome as staff and advisers; (remember -Agenda 21 is about making partnerships!) But under 18s will be in control”.
(iii) Postcards are fundamental learning tools for collecting and organizing paper information. Working with a postcard database does not need a computer but there is always an option to integrate it seamlessly into an electronically networked information society. Indeed, as a basic teaching tool, every postcard has a story to tell about the culture of its maker. Using postcards in class can be a motivating writing task and add a level of stimulation for students. A person sending and receiving postcards at home can quickly build a personal body of knowledge about environmental issues and the skills to tackle them.
Postcards were the first global social network binding the world together with common interests, creating links between people, places, and beliefs. Today they can alert people of all ages about the wonder of creation and the need to bring the climate crisis to the centre of education at all levels for living sustainably. There are forums where you can talk in your own language and share information/cards across social and political boundaries about what you are doing, or should do, individually or collectively to make the world a better place. This means defining social action and active citizenship.
5 Blogging About Social Action & Active Citizenship
Historically, citizenship education has been understood in two ways: as promoting responsible citizens through reflective inquiry, and as active citizenship learned through social action. The responsible citizen approach proposes that schools can prepare students for their civic role by developing their ability to form thoughtful opinions on matters of public policy. Advocates of active citizenship agree that reflective thinking about public matters is important but suggest that students should learn to act on their beliefs. Active citizenship within an ABC challenges students to identify, plan and carry out responsible community actions. Participation in responsible social action is necessary if students are to become participatory citizens. By putting reflective inquiry “to work”, using social media, active citizenship provides students with opportunities to test their ideas and learn about personal efficacy through social action.
Why Schools Should Teach The Curriculum Of The Future
International Classrooms On Line
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