Using music and the creative arts to enhance self-concept and harmony in a diverse school community

This case study documents how children from a local state primary school were given the unique opportunity to explore how they could learn different artforms and use the arts to promote harmony within the community. The school is located in a low socio-economic area with 87% of children coming from a diversity of non-English speaking backgrounds. There is little evidence of a strong across-school arts program and there is little support for the arts from most of the parents and many of the children struggle academically. As part of the project, eighteen children (Group A), aged from 10-12 years and who were selected mainly for their interest in the arts, experienced a variety of extra-curricular art experiences, learned about curating an exhibition on Community Harmony and as a result, created a series of artworks that were then exhibited at the University's Art Gallery. In the lead up to the exhibition, the children were also involved in a series of music and visual arts learning experiences during their lunchtimes. Most of the children had received very little musical input in primary school apart from singing, although some of them were involved in the choir and dance groups for the local performing arts festival. Therefore the music activities were simple and focussed on the elements of pitch, tone colour, structure, dynamics and duration. As well as a variety of tuned and untuned instruments, concrete materials were used, such as flashcards of instruments, note value, scores, etc., to assist with learning. The children worked together as a large group to learn the basic concept of each activity, then practised the activities in pairs or small groups, to gain confidence and skills in each learning experience. Through engaging in these and other integrated creative arts experiences the children examined how their backgrounds play a major role in how they view themselves and their community and how they can help bring harmony to the community. Throughout the project, the teachers observed that the eighteen children developed their self-confidence, leadership, communication and artistic skills and for many of the children this creative arts project was a life changing opportunity. As well as using a case study approach, all children in years 5 and 6 (10-12 year olds) in the school completed a self-concept questionnaire at the start of the year and again at the end of the year. The questionnaire included items related to both non-academic and academic self-concept. A higher percentage of the Group A children increased their mean result in the questionnaire from T1 to T2 in relation to non-academic self-concept (A=43%; B=36%), academic self-concept (A=57%, B=44%) and total self concept (A=57%, B=33%0 when compared with the Group B (the rest of the Year 5 and 6) children