A New Zealand “Pōwhiri” for Teaching Artistry

 
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A New Zealand “Pōwhiri” for Teaching Artistry

Eric Booth, Co-Founder, The Ensemble; Co-Founder, ITAC

11-06-2024

Māori performance art workshop. Photo: ITAC.

A good conference asks an important question; a great conference launches an answering process that reaches beyond its few days. In September, ITAC7, the Seventh International Teaching Artist Conference, brought hundreds of teaching artists from around the world to Auckland, New Zealand, to address the question of what the global field can learn from Indigenous wisdom about art and community.

Inside the Waipapa marae. Photo: ITAC.

This inquiry began with a pōwhiri, a Māori welcoming ceremony, in a sacred marae amid the campus of the University of Auckland. Throughout the conference days, many workshops focused on Māori and South Pacific Islander cultural expressions and their relationship to teaching artistry. There were overt as well as deep messages embedded in these Indigenous experiences: reminders to slow down and attend, and to make sure that creative work is given time to connect to spiritual sources and respected for its lineage and connection to the earth.

Altogether, the conference hosted over a hundred workshops from many different programs and traditions around the world. A wide range of teaching artist work was presented—from learning racial equity lessons through Bollywood dancing to the power of Shakespeare in prisons; from many kinds of positive health outcomes through the arts to ITAC’s Global Working Group on Accessibility—along with the delightful Office of Kindness, which drew a crowd in the conference lobby. A dozen members of Young ITAC (ages 20-early 30s) were there as well—emerging leaders from around the world, sharing their fresh ways of seeing what teaching artistry can be.

The author (foreground, right) conducts a teaching artistry workshop. Photo: ITAC.

As with ITAC’s six previous conferences, the greatest impact of the conference was the wealth and range of teaching artists who came together to share best practices and talk late into the night about ways to make a bigger difference in the world.

An interesting note for readers of The Ensemble: at this conference, there were fewer teaching artists from the field of music, especially those who work with orchestral instruments, than from any other artistic discipline. In my experience, this is a consistent pattern: musicians with classical training are significantly less likely than are other teaching artists to connect with the wider community of practitioners who use arts for social impact.

So, here’s a question. Why isn’t our community of musicians who are dedicated to social impact programs eager to connect with colleagues in alternative musical practices, and in other art forms, to learn from them and to share their expertise with the wider field? ITAC connects a vibrant world of teaching artists who are making a difference in so many ways. Our field of music for social impact is missing out on this vibrancy.

Simione Sevudredre, a teaching artist from Fiji, leading a workshop in a traditional Māori structure. Photo: ITAC.

The problem is not hard to remedy. ITAC is easy and free to join, and it has a newsletter, a podcast, and activities throughout the year. Having seen afresh in Auckland the emotional power of connecting teaching artists with their wider community, and the benefits of learning what colleagues around the world are doing, I urge Ensemble readers to join ITAC, a global community that I call “the sleeping giant of social change.”

The world needs you, as music teaching artists, to move your energies and voices into the greater global movement that includes every area of the arts. You need to know about the vast network of like-spirited programs in other art forms.

Joined together, our collective wisdom is as deep as Māori tradition. And our collective impact will be wider than anything our separate fields can achieve—and greater, probably, than any of us can imagine.

Art and Community, Arts and Spiritual Connection, Arts for Social Impact, Classical Music and Social Impact, Collective Wisdom in the Arts, Community Building through the Arts, Cultural Expressions, Eric Booth, Global Arts Network, Global Working Group on Accessibility, Indigenous Wisdom, Interdisciplinary Arts Practices, International Teaching Artist Conference, ITAC Collaborative, ITAC7, Māori Culture, Music Teaching Artists, October 2024, Office of Kindness, Positive Health Outcomes through Arts, Racial Equity through the Arts, Social Impact Programs, South Pacific Islander Culture, Teaching Artistry, Teaching Artists, Young ITAC

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