'Canvassing Creativity'

I've a piece in this month's Child magazines across Australia, 'Canvassing Creativity'.

I'm outlining the importance of art in education, and suggesting ways parents and teachers can help kids appreciate artworks. A sample:

we have to keep in mind what’s at stake. Because employment and vocation are so closely tied to education, schools can very easily develop a narrow approach: train kids for university or TAFE entrance, to ensure jobs and financial security. And this is undoubtedly important: we need well-trained, committed employees. But we also need citizens who can respond to their own feelings, and those of others; who can recognise their own buried fears and lusts; who can create and appreciate beauty. Otherwise, we end up with an insensitive, repressive, ugly civilization – one lacking the courage to see its own failings, and the goodwill to overcome them. Children need to know that the enjoyment of art is a bona fide pursuit – not a kind of lazy, dreamy idleness.

‘A picture lives a life like a living creature,’ Picasso once said, ‘lives only through the man who is looking at it.’ To keep young minds alive with art, we must help our children look.