Primary School Art Skills Training Program to Go Big in Schools
Over the past two years we have been sharing with you the creative talents of primary school students through the Primary School Art Skills Training project. It started with teaching the basics of drawing, painting and other art skills and it has developed into a full-fledged program where students are participating internationally for awards and prizes. Locally, the students have competed in smaller events and they have even created post-cards to sell and their artworks have been featured in calendars and other mediums. The plan is to get this program into other schools by implementing it through the curriculum. The project held its two year review and award ceremony today at the Bliss and News Five was there. Andrea Polanco has more:
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
Over two hundred primary school students gathered at the Bliss today for the PSAST review and award ceremony. The PSAST project started in 2014 and has trained over two hundred students in the arts – from drawing to painting. Over the two years, they have produced more than three hundred pieces of art.
Christine Huang
Christine Huang, PSAST Volunteer
“We teach them basic art techniques so that they could develop their own style. We do not teach them – as you can see- we don’t show them a lot of our own art work because we don’t want to influence them with our style. We want them to develop their own style.”
While the project is only being done in about twenty three schools around the City, the hope is to get it into more classrooms. So to do this, the PSAST art program will be a part of the primary school curriculum. An electronic guide was presented today to the Ministry of Education. It is expected that it will be made available online.
Patrick Faber
Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
“You do not have towait for some special curriculum to be developed. Although, today, I am understanding that as a part of the activities, an electronic curriculum will be handed over. Even if that was not being done today, every day in your classroom you have an opportunity, teachers, to include the artistic skills and talents of our children. If you are teaching Language, Science, Social Studies or Math, have the children do role play. Have the children draw out something; make some kind of artistic work; give them crayons; give them markers. Have them do some kind of presentation – that will help them to develop artistically.”
Christine Huang
“We started the electronic guide because we cannot be in every school but we still want the school to receive the materials. And so we started to put together the guide and this is just volume one. And in volume one we keep in mind that the students don’t have any basic training in art. In volume two and three we will invite local artists or foreign artists to come and help us with this design.”
Since the programme started, Belizean students have been competing in international and local art competitions winning several awards through art pieces send message. Today three of the winners were recognized by the Lions Club for art work on the theme of “peace.”
Christine Huang
“They do portraits, sceneries paintings, they do their own creative paintings and a lot of them also focused on the competitions.”
Andrea Polanco
“So, they participate locally and internationally?”
Christine Huang
“Yes, internationally and locally.”
Andrea Polanco
“How have our students done internationally?”
Christine Huang
“It didn’t start out good at first but we improved a lot over the years. And now we start receive more and more awards from international competitions.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
