Art Unlocks the Door to Learning

Research shows that two hours of arts participation each week improves our mental wellbeing. In this blog, I have tried to explain how art unlocks the door to learning.

Studying the arts helps improve academic performance. It improves learning in areas like math and science as well as the literary field. Art education fosters collaboration and group learning.

Arts participation goes beyond including art projects in class. It is a teaching strategy that seamlessly merges arts standards with core curricula to build connections and provide engaging context. In a math class, you might see students learning fractions by examining composition in Warhol’s Campbell’s soup paintings.

The impact of arts participation on our Happiness, Wellbeing, and Academics

There are many ways we can engage in all kinds of arts, whether it’s visual arts, design, and craft, performing arts, festivals, literature, or online and digital arts. The key is to spend time doing what we enjoy.

Here is what we’ve learned through experience about why arts participation is so important:

• Working in the arts helps learners to develop creative problem-solving skills.
• Teaching through the arts can present difficult concepts visually, making them easier to understand.
• Art instruction helps children with the development of motor skills, language skills, social skills, decision-making, risk-taking, and inventiveness.
• Visual arts teach learners about color, layout, perspective, and balance: all techniques that are necessary for presentations (visual, digital) of academic work.
• Integrating art with other disciplines reaches students who might not otherwise be engaged in classwork.
• Arts experiences boost critical thinking, teaching students to take the time to be more careful and thorough in how they observe the world.
• The arts provide challenges for learners at all levels.
• Art education connects students with their own culture as well as with the wider world.

Previous studies have shown a positive relationship between arts and academic achievement. Furthermore, I feel arts positively affect academic achievement. Findings provide additional evidence that an arts-integrated curriculum can benefit students.

As a Mathematics teacher, I feel, It’s a productive way to help students grapple with complex questions and topics and to inspire them to make art. Students engage in a creative process that connects an art form and another subject area and meets evolving objectives in both.

Arts-integrated schools like Oakridge International School across the country believe that by creating a richer, more memorable learning experience through the arts, students unleash not only a rising tide of academic achievement but they lay the foundation for what it means to be a truly creative community.

Pratyusha Dikkala

Primary school Maths Facilitator