Interdisciplinary Arts: What Happens When Arts Come Together

by Michael Cerveris,
AEC Program AssociateEvery day, we learn from our media saturated culture, that words do matter. We also learn that a lack of agreement as to what those words mean can result in unclear, if not, mis-communication. What if we were to start from a consensus regarding some ideas and apply them to a complex event such as “What Happens When Arts Come Together?” If you are curious about the results, this is going to be the context for an upcoming day-long AEC workshop, January 12, 2010 at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts with Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble.

Ask three people what interdisciplinary means and you will get at least four answers. The same would be true of terms like arts integration or learning in and through the arts, etc. But if, for a brief point in time, we accept that interdisciplinary in relation to the arts means working from the arts as an integrated system in and of itself and not as group of separate categories of a culture, if we accepted that there are qualities of thinking we could apply to all cognitive and affective knowledge, would we find ourselves at the end in a richer place from which to move to another level? Perhaps that level might be your own opportunity to create multi-arts performances with your students. Or, perhaps the result could be a multi-arts lesson plan for your classroom, or even the spark that could create an opportunity to work collaboratively with a colleague from another discipline. In any case, you could find out about such possibilities on January 12.

To help us on this journey, we have asked members of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble to share examples of their work that integrates several art forms into one experience which will serve as the context for our discussions. Why choose works with a multi-disciplinary perspective? Because it encourages seeing, hearing, and feeling in multiple perspectives more readily and exposes the energies that bind the arts in an interdisciplinary mode. It provides more entry points depending on one’s particular experience and it supports thinking more broadly at first but allows for greater and greater depth as investigation proceeds. It is a richer experience with immediacy. And finally, it leads to the question, is there a relation between integrated arts and integrated thinking and learning in all disciplines?

It is our hope that attendees will come away with a motivation to explore ways that the arts come together and can have a transformative impact on the educational system. For more information on the January 12 workshop, go here.