High Praise

Here is the article that was recently in the Herald regarding Cohen`s school. High praise, indeed! Have I mentioned how completely inspired I am by his school...

Link to the Article


Learning through art leads to a fuller life


By Eugene Stickland November 15, 2008 - Published in the Calgary Herald



Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to visit the Calgary Arts Academy--a gem of a school in the city's west end. I had been asked to give a speech that same evening to friends and staff of the school on the theme of the importance of art in our society.

The Calgary Arts Academy is the only school of its kind in North America. Students learn about all subjects through the fine arts, not the other way around. It's a noble experiment. Yet as the school is in its seventh year, it's beyond being an experiment. It's an idea whose time has come.

There are no desks at this school. There is student-generated art everywhere. Classical music playing from the speakers.

The effect of the colours, the textures, the beauty and the energy one feels in the corridors is almost overwhelming. It's like when you walk in the door, you are visiting a magical kingdom where the children have been allowed to create the environment, with maybe just a little help from the adults.

It's just so far removed from the grim institution that I attended when at elementary school. I remember the monotonous buzz of the neon lights, the squeaking of chalk on the blackboard and the hiss of the radiator. A couple of fights at recess. The rest is but a blur.

What follows is an excerpt from my speech. I began by referring to a piano teacher I had in university, who said to me one evening, over a number of Pernods, "Art is a way of life."

Strange words to be spoken in Regina in the late 1970s.

It's a concept I've been exploring in the intervening three decades.

Yet maybe exploring is almost too active a verb, because if you truly believe in the power and processes of art, then maybe you just end up living it--good or bad. Some days I'm not sure which, because it's never an easy journey.

What our politicians and funders don't seem to realize is that at the end of the day, the events and concerns of a society are by and large forgotten; fortunes made and lost don't really figure into the final measure of a time or place. Only art does.

One thinks of the broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert. There's a poem that should be required reading for prime ministers and the CEOs of large corporations. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" And yet there is nothing left of the mighty king, but for the statue, a work of art created by a sculptor: "The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed."

There's another sentiment about art that I find interesting. My favourite quotation, the words I live by on a day-by-day basis, are by the Irish author Samuel Beckett who said, "No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Maybe the study and creation of art remind us that we are not perfect, we do fail and, yet, if we do as well as we can, then we haven't really failed at all. This is a radical notion to those who routinely sacrifice the journey to the end result and who grow old very quickly.

As the American poet E. E. Cummings (who did capitalize his name) once said, "and even if it's Sunday may I be wrong, for whenever men are right they are not young."

Life is short, art is long. Perfection is an illusion. We all know this. I'm preaching to the converted.

Obviously, living as I do, I have a deep respect for the goals and aspirations of the Calgary Arts Academy, and everyone involved with it, from those who help run it and fund it, to parents with the vision and courage to place their children there, and of course the students themselves.

One hopes that whatever they become-- artists or prime ministers, perhaps--they will take into the world a healthy attitude toward living, and everything that goes with living. The most important thing, the thing that living should be about, and yet something we seldom talk about because most people have forgotten how to do it, is the act of creating something from nothing.

Once a person learns how to create something from nothing--be it a painting, a poem, a song, a movement across a stage--then he or she has the skills to create his or her individual self. And from there, can create family, community, society.

It is so much more interesting to create than simply to consume, or even worse, to tear things down.

I believe that places like the Calgary Arts Academy--although I realize after my tour that there aren't really any other places quite like the Calgary Arts Academy, anywhere --so maybe I mean the study of the arts in general and the acquisition of knowledge through the arts--helps to form the kind of people we want in our midst, who will make this city and this world a better place for all of us.

Like the school itself--a world that's kinder, safer, more beautiful and oh, so colourful.

Eugene Stickland Is A Calgary Playwright