Roudette – Creative potential there, but it needs fostering

Creative education of the nation’s youth can bring about social change.{{more}}

This was the premise of a presentation entitled ‘Groundings in the earth of daily life, Aesthetics as Praxis’ delivered at the University of Warwick on September 24, by Vonnie Roudette, Art Lecturer at the St Vincent and the Grenadines Community College.

The three-day conference entitled ‘The Caribbean: Aesthetics, Ecology, Politics’ explored the relationships between Caribbean environments, literature and the arts, and issues of political and socio-economic justice.

According to Roudette, the presentation was made in Guyana last year and included methods of teaching which she had already been using in the classroom.

“The work I do brings together creativity, youth, nature and the implications of social organization,” Roudette told SEARCHLIGHT.

The response by most of the academics and professors in the audience according to Roudette, was nothing short of fascination at her ability to get people to respond creatively.

She explained the harsh realities of the Caribbean region, which are far from the romanticized view of the region.

One such harsh reality, according to Roudette, was that the majority of the people in the region do not read, which came as a surprise to most of the academics.

And seeing that we do not read and write, we need to communicate by a non-verbal method.

“And we have that, but it is not being taught in schools,” Roudette explained.

She was of the view that the school system was crippling the latent abilities of the human resources of young people.

“My work is trying to reconnect them with their inherent abilities, not just artistic, but creative abilities,” she said, adding that this will empower young people in the present climate.

“Our actions need to be focused on problem solving,” Roudette said.

The creative potential of the youth is what we can harness, because according to Roudette, the creative process is about problem solving.

But this was only an attitude, one which we need to have in order to address change, but it was not being fostered in the education system right now, she explained.

“Creative education is so powerful that it can bring about expression, but it is yet understood,” she said.

There is a need for a more integrated approach to how children are instructed, Roudette said, noting that there were many different ways to teach and children learn in many different ways.

The creole language, for example, according to Roudette was one example of how Caribbean people used their senses to communicate.

“They learn from all their senses, so perhaps we need to model our education system on that type of learning then they (students) wouldn’t forget what they learn,” she told SEARCHLIGHT.

However she contended that the potential to be creative was there, but it needed to be fostered.

“The education system is key in nurturing creative elements among young people,” she said.

Roudette has been invited to present at two doctoral programmes in Chicago and Puerto Rico.