The Fundamentals of Teaching Artistry, 2019 – as used in the Lincoln Center Eduction Teaching Artist Development Labs
These six inclinations, understandings and habits of action of artists form the Six Fundamentals of Teaching Artistry.
- Activating artistry - the number one job of a teaching artist is to activate the artistry of others; this supports the expression of individual artistic voice, the articulation of ideas in and through an art form and in non-traditional creative media, and the development of a personal relationship to the arts (using a broad definition of the arts).
- Adeptness with creative processes - the ability to launch, guide and open up the wealth of learning potential in creative processes, and to balance their potency with creative products.
- Creating safe-and-charged environments for engagement - the ability to foster a learning environment that is inviting, challenging, energizing, brave and attuned to the participants’ cultural background. This dual, almost paradoxical, quality is conducive to artistic quality and rigor, and is adjustable to nurture intrinsically-motivated participation by a wide range of participants when cultivated with high sensitivity to the particular community.
- Deftness with inquiry processes – an expert sense that creative engagement is an inquiry process that requires flexible questioning, considering of multiple perspectives, digging deeper, setting aside preconceptions and prejudices, wondering, revising, self-assessing, and reflecting. Reflective processes are crucial and too often under-utilized; they include looking back, within, and ahead, as well as guiding learners toward personally relevant discoveries.
- Authenticity – a commitment to the embodiment of your artist-self in all your choices and actions, and to an artist-to-artist co-discovery relationship with participants; this manifests in the quality of your attention, in a co-learning mindset, in spontaneous experimentation and improvisation, in openness and curiosity about cultural differences, and in a transparent sharing of your ongoing discoveries.
- Imagining meaningful new worlds – an inclination toward “the more”—a relentless urge to reach beyond the literal, beyond the “good enough,” beyond right answers, standard solutions, existing opinions and judgments, to seeing the world as if it could be otherwise, and to bringing that new world into being. “This ardent kinship with beyond is at the heart of our love of beauty.” - John O’Donohue, Beauty