Innovations in Education: the art and science partnership

Qatar Foundation, Education City, Doha,
Virginia Commonwealth University, October 19 -20, 2003.

Reviewed by Michael Punt

Mpunt@easynet.co.uk

This symposium was the product of an initiative originating with the undoubted enthusiasm and intellectual commitment to education of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah through the Qatar Foundation, and the energy and vision of Harriett Fulbright in her capacity of Chair of the International Child Art Foundation. In bringing together a symposium of such breadth and distinction Ashfaq Ishaq, the Founder and executive Director of the International Child Art Foundation, also saw an important moment for education in the Middle East. What characterised the ambitions of this initiative was a belief that will not be unfamiliar to the Leonardo constituency: 'the benefits of arts to science education'.

In fact there appeared to be a much more complex network of interests represented in the presentations. They were primarily art education, art, science, and finally art and science. The discussion of education fell into two broad categories, the practice of art teachers when they considered science, and the 'scientific'evaluation of knowledge acquisition. The Art and Science issue, by which I mean the ways in which many of us have begun to articulate the undifferentiated field of research between the routines and practices of contemporary artists and scientists was something of a 'dog that did not bark'in that, although not directly addressed it was a silent power in the subsequent discussions. The significant and most welcome exception to this was in the opening address by H. H. Sheikha Mozah in which she made clear that, in her view, science was a creative practice and art was the key to [Qatar] getting on equal terms with the rest of the world. Not art as a discrete epistemology however, but as a cross-disciplinary practice that would bring science into the first rank. The response by Harriet Fulbright was equally emphatic in its affirmation of the individual as the driving force of progressive energy. In her opening remarks she drew on her own experience to support the assertion that art and writing developed an [essential] fluency between description and response. Perhaps the most valuable contribution to the art and science discussion was her advocacy of institutional support for art as a risky [and messy] business and in that quality it is more real than it is ever imagined. Art, for these two speakers, seemed to be the life of science which needed to be explored in spite of (or because of) artist's refusal to acknowledge external definition. Many of us familiar with the Art and Science debate elsewhere could only envy the enlightenment of these positions.

Seen through this filter of redefining how art education met scientific training, the symposium was potentially a ground-breaking intervention of international significance. It seemed that in the offsite conversations and workshops (rather than the presentations and questions) these insights were the focus of spectrum of responses from a cross-section of participants chosen from twenty five countries with different languages, intellectual agendas and conventions. Given the potential for disaster in such an ambitious symposium, the band of organisers working for the Qatar Foundation and Christina Lindholm (Dean of Virginia Commonwealth  University at Qatar) are to be congratulated for the achievement of facilitating speakers and participants without a hitch. There was, however some unevenness and many of the delegates would have welcomed opportunities for greater interaction outside the symposium between the two or three quite distinct cultural groups present, some of which have become intellectually invisible as a consequence of the conflict in the Middle East. Almost inevitably many scientific presentations were incomplete and perhaps somewhat dated, while some of the other papers seemed somewhat out of context. Of the artists/theorists presenting perhaps Amy Ione, offered the most developed response to the particular visual culture of the larger geographic and political region of which Qatar is a part. Her paper, drawing a parable from H.C.Escher’s life and work, instructed a mode of cross-disciplinary research between the arts and sciences. Such a rescue was a rewarding invitation to reconsider Escher in the current discussion on the issue of knowledge acquisition relative to current concepts of consciousness. The most scientific of the presentations did indeed focus on consciousness including the brain function and synergies with creative actions (although with somewhat oversimplified models in some cases).

These minor deficits in the structure of the discourse were perhaps to be expected in what was essentially the launch of a dramatic epistemological initiative, in the shape of the Qatar Foundation. They should not overshadow the achievement in extent to which the symposium managed to gather up the commitment among delegates to art and science as equal components in the curriculum of any ambitious education policy. Indeed to reflect Fulbright's sentiment, such unevenness as there was is perhaps the acid test of the project's realism and evidence of the universal value of the initiative.

Innovations in Education: the art and science partnership was the first in a series of symposia planned by the Qatar Foundation. The openness of the ambition to get 'on terms' through innovative education in which outcome is measured through qualitative indicators rather than in short term faux market accounting can serve as an object lesson to us all, especially in the USA and Europe. It could lead the way to developing education policy for a new generation in an intellectual environment in which disciplinary demarcations can no longer be sustained. For further information and updates of these projects see:

Qatar Foundation at:
www.qf.edu.qa

International Child Art Foundation at:
www.icaf.org

and the symposium at:
www.InnovationsInEducation.org