Laura Pasquini:
Art offers a transformative experience where we enter it in one place and exit in a completely different place, and that's something that we just can't replicate easily in any other discipline.
Dan Baum:
I'm Dan Baum and you're listening to Redefine U.
We hear a lot today about STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math, and occasionally we might hear the term STEAM, which includes the arts. Today we have an expert on that integration, Laura Pasquini, Program Navigator for Visual Arts and Humanities at AACC. Hi Laura, it's good to speak with you.
Laura Pasquini:
Hi. Great to be here.
Dan Baum:
Let's just start really basic. What is arts integration?
Laura Pasquini:
Yeah. So arts integration is an educational approach that integrates art into non-art curriculum or non-art subjects. And what it does is it uses an art form to both enhance and engage that subject and the learners.
Dan Baum:
What drew you to this field? Tell us a little bit about your background.
Laura Pasquini:
Well, art has always been a large part of my life. My grandmother was a painter, and my father was an artisan. He was an iron worker. And so it was always art and design was always prevalent in my life. I think that arts integration became more prevalent as I worked in the museum field as an educator. In that context, I worked a lot with DC public schools and learned that art in the museum could extend beyond the walls into the curriculum in K through 12. So when we would host a teachers' workshop, for example, we'd have educators come from all subjects, not just visual art, but math, for example. And we'd have to look at how artists use geometry and concepts in mathematics in some of these works of art and design curriculum connections around it. So that's when my world really opened up to the possibilities of art as a pedagogical tool to engage learners and foster creativity.
Dan Baum:
So it sounds like you really applied that museum learning in the K through 12 environment. What exactly is a program navigator here?
Laura Pasquini:
Well, actually this role is a contracted position under the Perkins Foundation. It was a vision project by Wilfredo Valladares Lara, who had headed the department. He was the chair for three years, and he really saw this as a role that could bridge the visual arts with the community. So traditionally this role coaches students through their pathway in college, helps them understand what careers are possible in the creative industry, but it also is a role that creates relationships, both internally and externally. So he asked me, in the first six months that I was here, to really focus on the relationship building, and gave me a lot of freedom in developing that. And so in that process, I not only was able to create relationships with our students and their families, but also with key stakeholders and educators in the community that could help them before they even set foot in the college.
Dan Baum:
Let's talk a little bit about students then. So I'm just curious how integrating or applying arts can help a student transform. How might it help them thrive or accomplish more?
Laura Pasquini:
So this is where I feel that the word art and creativity sometimes get loosely combined, and they are a little distinctly different to me. I think that art, what it does is it creates a platform where learners can engage in critical thinking skills in a unique way that other subjects don't really provide that platform in the same way. You can not only explore problem solving and critical thinking, but also develop empathy and multiple perspectives towards something. Art is the application of creative skill and imagination. And usually in visual arts it tends to be in mediums such as paint, clay. Now we're getting into the digital realm. So we see that being used as a medium. Creativity is something different. I think creativity is something that's innate to all human beings, and it crosses subject matter.
I think it's about originality. It's about having an original idea. And that's a little more complex than people think. A lot of times I think it involves being very open to your environment, to sensory experiences, and information, and then being able to be open to synthesizing those ideas in an original way that hasn't been done before. I think my concern, at least in our society, is that a lot of times I see young people, and I've worked with a lot of young people in my career, around the age 10 or 11 years old, you'll hear them say, "I'm not an artist. I can't draw a stick figure." You really start to hear this with middle school boys around age 12 or 13. "I'm not an artist. I can't even draw a stick figure." And what happens in that process is they start to shut down the doors to creativity, to their own relationship, to their own creativity.
They don't see themselves as artists and therefore they're not creative. And we lose the opportunity to nurture creativity in young minds. And we lose the conversation on how you do that and apply it to other fields. So in my neighborhood, I live in a big engineering neighborhood, and if somebody says they're into the arts, it's almost like a dirty word, like, "Oh my." And I think that... I try to encourage friends of mine, parents and peers to nurture that curiosity, and to not be afraid of it. It's something that we need to embrace and encourage in young people, and use as a tool. Because I think it's innate to all human experience and to rob ourselves of that, we really rob society of that, in a way, when we do that. There's a podcast I just love, by Sir Ken Robinson about, it's called Are School's Killing Creativity?
It's, I think, the most watched TED talk. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. But what he's really talking about is why we are so focused on standardized testing instead of looking at concepts like the Reggio Emilia concept, that really introduce creativity as a core part of education, and alongside of that, interdisciplinary learning, for example. So I think that with the onset of AI, what we're seeing with Chat GPT in its early stages, that creativity, interdisciplinary learning, arts integration, all of these things in pedagogical practice are going to come back because they're going to be necessary. That's the distinction for me.
Dan Baum:
I love that distinction. But as you said, not everyone is as excited, or maybe they feel intimidated by either art or creativity. So how do you get someone more excited about that so that they can see the value in fields like math or science or engineering?
Laura Pasquini:
Wow, that's a great question. With my background in education and art, some of the best educators have always taught me to just model. I was welcoming a group of students alongside Steve Berry. He's an instructional specialist here, and a coach, and we were working with some high school students recently and just giving them a tour of the campus. They teamed us up together. Now his background is business and entrepreneurship. And we did this thing on a whim where there's this sculpture on campus. It was actually the first sculpture to ever be put on campus, I believe, called Frontier, and it's that large metal triangular sculpture. And I was like, "Steve, can we just do something collaboratively here with these students?" Because we were losing them. They were looking at the sky in every which way. And I modeled this method that I learned at the National Gallery of Art when I was contract educating with them.
And they taught us this method called Visual Thinking Strategies, and it's a way of approaching a work of art, slowing down, observing, and discussing it as a group. Now it sounds really simple, but it's a bit complex, because you really have to facilitate a conversation over the course of a period of time while you're looking at this work of art. We walked around the piece, we described what we were thinking, and he saw how much students, all of a sudden, got activated by grounding their learning in art. And by giving them a little bit of support, prompting the right questions, all of a sudden you had these teenagers, from all backgrounds, participating in a dialogue about this sculpture. He was so inspired that then he did that in his classroom. And I brought with me one of the responses of his students. If I could read a couple lines.
Dan Baum:
Yeah, please. Because you're jumping right at my next question was going to be, do you have specific stories of students and transforming and what happened or a favorite moment? So yeah, please share with us.
Laura Pasquini:
Sure. So he went back to the classroom and he repeated what we did, which is called, the actual thinking strategy is called See, Think, Wonder. And there is a training, an online training for educators that the National Gallery offers. And this is from a non-art student, just prompting them with specific questions. "It is my interpretation the artist is representing strength and perseverance in this sculpture. The material is made out of a strong metal that although shows brown, orange, rust, I believe that it's the artist's way of adapting to change. Another aspect of strength is the six triangles represented within the sculpture. The triangle is believed to be the strongest shape, and clearly the artists have used majority triangles. The other shape is a circle, and those represent community and unity. I believe the artists combine these shapes into the sculpture, strategically placed them in front of the careers building to represent strength, adaptation and community."
Dan Baum:
Wow.
Laura Pasquini:
And it goes on-
Dan Baum:
That's pretty deep.
Laura Pasquini:
... I have pages of this. Some other examples. I think the work I did with Professor Carattini, who is really spearheading arts integration at the higher learning level. Traditionally it's used in K through 12, but we are seeing universities use it around Maryland and nationwide. But I've worked with her primarily, and the project she did on home and belonging, we conceived a triptych together. And there were many moments where students connected to this sense of home and belonging through this triptych, which involved a print, a writing exercise, and then a photo transfer of what home and belonging meant to them. I think through art, they were able to explore the concept of home and belonging, and how social, personal, and a variety of other factors play a role in that through their anthropology course. So that was really inspiring. And we did it throughout the year with a number of different students. There are examples online if people want to look it up and read about the students' response to it.
Dan Baum:
So you have an example of business, anthropology. Overall, how have faculty received the idea, or perhaps how do you think it's impacting faculty and how they see creativity and arts in their respective classes or fields?
Laura Pasquini:
I've had an incredible experience with the faculty here at Anne Arundel Community College, doing this work. Right now I'm working with multilingual learners in college program. We did a book arts project, that I'm very excited to share that combines language and art with the students. I've had requests from director of Homeland Security, Professor Senn-Carter, on doing interviews with FBI forensic artists. We've had Health Sciences reach out to us recently, Vita Chalk, asking if we'd like to collaborate this year on her project. And also Matthew Bem from STEAM asked me to design a STEAM project for students last year. We had 200 high schoolers participate in that, and we did this origami work together. So there's just endless possibilities. And I have this personal motto, and it's by invitation.
If I'm invited to something, if faculty want to invite me to collaborate, I fully willing to do that. And I've gotten quite a few collaborations and invitations lately. And I think Amy and I are very excited about where this can go in terms of a tool. And we're seeing it happen, like I said, at other universities, for example, UMBC, their Center for Design and Visual Culture. They lead a whole outreach program on arts integration in the local schools, MICA, Towson. And also more recently, Johns Hopkins received quite a large sum of money to support this effort, and it's led by, I believe, Daniel Weiss, who used to head the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So specifically what I mean is they're looking into elevating the arts across the curriculum at places like that. So yeah, it's a lot of potential.
Dan Baum:
Sounds exciting. Sounds like it's being well received in various places. How about just with students, how do you help faculty who may be aren't so comfortable in either the integration or with arts and creativity? How do you help them if they don't necessarily see the immediate value?
Laura Pasquini:
So usually when I design a workshop or I partner with a faculty member to design it, I have this idea in my head, a formula for success. I don't set up an art... Because art can be very intimidating. I try not to design an experience that is going to close doors. It's always in my mind that when I design an experience, it's collaborative and it opens the doors to possibilities, and to also allow for success. And I guess to answer that question, how do we get people on board? I haven't really struggled with that so far. I think that people are curious about their own creativity and how to relate to it more, how to foster it more.
We've worked with the chairs from Anne Arundel County, the art chairs from Anne Arundel County, very successfully in professional development here, and I'm seeing a lot of potential for that more, in fact. And now the social science chairs of Anne Arundel County would like to come here and have requested an arts integration workshop. In fact, they were a little skeptical about it, and we invited them to come observe one of our sessions, our workshops, and after that, there was just such positive feedback, and I think they saw and experienced the value. It's really that thing of experiential learning. You have to do it to understand why it's valuable. So those professional development opportunities, for the people in leadership positions, for the people in educational positions, are very important for them to experience it.
Dan Baum:
What would be your dream collaboration? Do you have one?
Laura Pasquini:
Wow. Well, yeah, actually, Professor Carattini and I are working on it right now. We've invited Susan Magsamen from the Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University to be a guest speaker for next year. So we are working on that collaboration. She's leading some phenomenal work on the healing power of the arts in neuroscience, and looking into some really revolutionary research like how neural networks in the brain are healed through the arts. And so I think that that definitely is one of my top bucket list items in terms of arts integration collaboration. Yeah.
Dan Baum:
It's really interesting to hear that a college like Johns Hopkins integrating in this way. What do you think about other institutions? You've named a number that have embraced this, but what do you think is holding others back? Why isn't there more STEAM when we've heard for so long about STEM?
Laura Pasquini:
That's such a good question because I ask myself that all the time. In fact, this STEAM project that we did with the college was fantastic. We used an artist named Sookkyung Park who created these modular forms out of origami, and had discussions all about how artists and engineers, I think, at MIT worked together to de-engineer nature's folds to understand them better, and applied them to satellites in space. So there's a documentary called Between the Folds that I recommend for that. But yeah, I think art is so prevalent in STEAM, and I oftentimes feel that we're not getting a full-rounded education for these students when we leave the arts out. To answer that question, here's my observation, artists are so dedicated to the act of art and creating that oftentimes there's not a lot of advocacy. I see so much advocacy in other subjects, but artists by nature, they're not into marketing. They're not your front person-
Dan Baum:
Unless they are in marketing.
Laura Pasquini:
... or unless they are in marketing. Actually, yes, we have a lot of artists in marketing here. But they're not typically the people that are going to go out there and advocate for these things. They're going to be the people behind the scenes creating or... So I think advocacy, to answer your question, I just think it's advocacy and for the most part. Because to me, there's no doubt that art plays a role in STEAM and that it's fundamental.
Dan Baum:
It's just stunning to me, particularly as we see these technologies you mentioned like Chat GPT type of large learning language models and such, that we have to be more creative and lean into our human side, and yet that seems to be intimidating for some people. What do you think is the perfect outcome for students? When they participate in this, what's the biggest takeaway for them? If you could sum up that there would be a major takeaway for them.
Laura Pasquini:
The first word that came to mind when you were speaking was transformation. I think that that's what these experiences offer. Above and beyond everything else is art offers a transformative experience where we enter it in one place and exit in a completely different place. And that's something that we just can't replicate easily in any other discipline. I want them, I want the learning to be become long-lasting. I don't want it to just be something that is checked off and "I completed that module." I'd like it to transform them in some way. I'd like empathy to be a part of that transformation, and a relationship to their own confidence in their creativity. So I would say confidence is a big thing that I'd like them to walk away with, because I'd like them to think about, in the future, "How can I approach a problem and solve it creatively now with this skill set?"
And to believe that they could, not to stay away from it. I think you've just hit the nail on the head with saying that human centered education, human centered design, we have to come back to all of this and get away from standardized testing, rote learning. This is not going to help 21st century learners. They really have to be prepared to be a partner with AI, be a conductor of AI. I read a quote recently that said, "In the future, we are either going to be a conductor or composer of AI or a consumer." So the question becomes then how do we create conductors, composers? And I think to do that, they have to have a certain skill set.
Dan Baum:
And even wise consumers, it's stunning to me. My undergraduate, I went to a college that was being forward-thinking and removed testing and other things because they said, "This is going to be the learner we need in the future." They were predicting that, and yet we have become even more standardized in our testing in so many different ways. So it's stunning to me. You mentioned the transformation. You're speaking our language. This is Redefine U. But along with that empathy, confidence, the other things you mentioned, how do you empower students so they can take these skills with them?
Laura Pasquini:
I had someone at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, when I was just starting off, taught me that a great educator is a facilitator of learning. You're at your best when you can almost remove yourself from being that lead in the classroom, but you become a part of a learning community. So how I would prepare them, I think, is to create curriculum that allows them to discover their own strengths, and in doing so, use creativity as a foundation for that. So for example, the project that we're working on right now has a lot to do with human migration stories, and how do I always connect students to the personal part of that?
I think that's the bottom line is I ask myself, "How do I create personal meaning making?" Because if you're introducing a subject, if you're introducing a work of art, it's really not going to resonate unless you can find a personal connection to students. So I think... I don't know if that answers your question, but I always approach with a single work of art that can be a connector to a universal experience, a universal human experience, and migration is one of those.
Dan Baum:
Well, if that student quote that you provide is any example, they've really opened up their way of seeing things in their ability to critique. I've also heard you speak and present, particularly for parents, these are the types of careers that this can lead to. You mentioned the engineering community that you're in. So when you do encounter individuals who don't see immediate value, they're not educators, they're not the student, what's the practical side that you are sharing with them? How do you help them understand the benefits here?
Laura Pasquini:
Yeah. So a lot of times my job as a program navigator involves scouring and researching on creative careers. I oftentimes share with them titles to creative careers are not as straightforward as let's say, nursing, right? And to all my friends in nursing and engineering at the college, you're just phenomenal. I just want to say that I enjoy working with you, but it's much easier to say, "I want to be a nurse," and then look online and apply for a job in nursing. In the creative industry, it's much more complex. I'll often talk about an example in the government. They don't just call a graphic designer a graphic designer, they call them a visual information specialist, right?
Dan Baum:
Sounds very newspeak.
Laura Pasquini:
So it's part of my job to build awareness around these job titles, what they mean, and what the creative economy does to transform landscapes, economic landscapes, social landscapes. I'll give you a great example, the Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank Gehry in downtown LA. Before he created that building, and please look it up if you haven't seen it. That was pretty much what they called the dead zone in downtown LA. Once they constructed that space, over the course of 10 years, businesses came and built up around it, restaurants came, industry came around it, and now it's a thriving economic hub in the heart of LA because such a beautiful space was able to transform the environment.
So if you really look at the statistics, and I like to share some of these with people, is that in Maryland, if you look at the statistics around our art communities that are funded by the Maryland State Arts Council, the economies grow up when artists come into a community and transform it. And we saw that with Greenwich Village back in the day, right? That's just an example that many people might think of, but look at locally at Hyattsville, look at Berlin, Maryland. These are places that actually get support through the Maryland State Arts Council to invest in the arts in a community, because that transforms the community and the economy into a more thriving place where people want to come.
Dan Baum:
Before we started, we were talking about how Annapolis now has first Sunday Arts Sunday block off certain section of West Street, and all these artisans come and people can come and enjoy that. So we're already seeing how it can be a vibrant part of the community. This has been such a pleasure, Laura. I'm just curious, what didn't we cover that you hoped we might address?
Laura Pasquini:
So I think the only thing that we haven't covered is that Professor Carattini and I have received some support to launch an arts integration pilot at the college next year. It's going to involve a series of workshops, professional development opportunities, field trips, and guest speakers. So we're really excited to share that both internally with the college and externally with Anne Arundel County public schools especially. So just look out for those opportunities and partner with us. We'd like to hear from you.
Dan Baum:
That sounds great. Well, thank you for all that you're doing for students. Everything you're saying is so near and dear to my heart. My son's a budding filmmaker. My daughter is an anthropology major in her senior year at college, so I'm sure she would love the arts integration as part of that. But thank you for helping our students stretch and apply their creativity in practice.
Laura Pasquini:
Oh, and thank you so much for having me.
Dan Baum:
Laura made the distinction between the study of art compared to the pursuit and expression of creativity. A distinction helpful for those who might question the value of certain courses, programs, and disciplines. Ironically, the skills gained through arts integration are exactly what employers seek today, independent and critical thinking, creativity and innovation, communication and teamwork.
As Laura noted, along with valuable skills, there are many careers rooted in both art and creativity. I've enjoyed such a career. My wife, Susan, works for the County Arts Council, and our children are pursuing their passions in the arts and humanities. In our family the pursuit and expression of art and creativity have never been questioned, evidenced in part by a home filled with paintings, ceramics, instruments, and books, and more books. It reflects a lifelong compulsion to express beauty and to understand and connect through our common humanity, noble paths that will always be worth exploring.
Redefine U is a production of Anne Arundel Community College. Our executive producer is Allison Baumbusch. Our producer and editor is Amanda Behrens. Others who help with this podcast include Alicia Renehan, Ricky Hartford, and Ben Pierce. Special thanks to Laura Pasquini. Find show notes, how to subscribe, and other extras on our website, aacc.edu/podcast. I'm your host and creator of this podcast, Dan Baum. Thanks for listening.