Fine Arts

Fine Arts at GSIS focuses student learning on an aesthetic understanding and arts practice developed through the art forms of drama, music and visual arts, experienced individually or in combinations with others. Although these three forms may be used in interrelated ways, each has unique language, techniques and conventions. Students develop creative ways of expressing themselves and develop a critical appreciation of their own works and those of others. They use their senses, perceptions, feelings, values and knowledge to communicate through the arts.

Aesthetic understanding helps students to appreciate and critically respond to various arts experiences with enjoyment. Through their arts experiences, students come to understand broader questions about the values and attitudes held by individuals and communities. Arts practice involves the exploration and development of ideas and feelings through the use of a range of skills and knowledge of art techniques and processes. The arts provide a powerful means of expression and communication of life experiences and imagination. The arts contribute to the development of an understanding of the physical, emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, social, moral and spiritual dimensions of human experience. They also assist the expression and identity of individuals and groups through the recording and sharing of experiences and imagination.

In linking all units of study with the principles of IB Educational expectations Fine Arts at GSIS encompasses five key areas:

• Arts and the Community
• Arts and Communication
• Arts and Values
• Arts, Creativity and Satisfaction
• Arts and Life Skills

Arts and the Community

The arts play an important role in the life of the community. While some works of the arts are presented in formal settings, such as galleries and theatres, the arts also permeate everyday life. Their influence is evident, for example, in the design of the clothes we wear, the buildings in which we live and work, and many of the objects we use every day. The arts are important for the expression of the life and culture of communities, and contribute to the transmission of values and ideas from generation to generation.

Arts and Communication

The arts are a major form of human communication and expression. Individuals and groups use them to explore, express and communicate ideas, feelings and experiences. Each arts form is a language in its own right, being a major way of symbolically knowing and communicating experience. Through the arts individuals and groups express, convey and invoke meaning. Like other language forms, arts languages have their own conventions, codes, practices and meaning structures. They also communicate cultural contexts. Students benefit from understanding and using these ways of knowing and expressing feelings and experiences.

Arts and Values

Artistic works can inform, teach, persuade and provoke thought. They can reproduce and reinforce existing ideas and values, challenge them, or offer new ways of thinking and feeling. They can confirm existing values and practices, and they can bring about change. As a result, the arts play an important role in shaping our understanding of ourselves as individuals and members of society and our understanding of the world in which we live.

Arts, Creativity and Satisfaction

The arts provide a major means of personal creativity, satisfaction and pleasure. They allow the opportunity for creative problem solving, self-expression and the use of the imagination in a range of different forms. The study of the arts can provide students with immediate satisfaction as well as providing the basis for lifelong enjoyment.

Arts and Life Skills

The Arts involves the development of students' skills across a wide range of human activities. Learning in the arts promotes the integration of skills from different areas of human potential, promoting 'multi-sensory; learning and the development of 'multiple intelligences'. The arts develop verbal and physical skills, logical and intuitive thinking, interpersonal skills and spatial, rhythmic, visual and kinesthetic awareness. They promote emotional intelligence, a way of understanding, using and making responses through the emotions and students' intrapersonal qualities and experiences. Through the arts, students learn to use and experiment with a range of traditional and emerging technologies.