Arts Policy, Practice and Education: Questions of Use/r Values

Abstract

This chapter references a final year project by Music Education Specialist Tabitha Rajaratnam from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, studying the musical pathways of Fellow Music Education Specialist Muraledharan Naidu (Murale hereafter), who successfully auditioned and played in an ensemble at the 2014 iteration of Esplanade’s Bright Young Things jazz-based project. Rajaratnam’s study raises questions. Was Murale mentored towards a staged performance at the end of the project? Who was involved in that mentoring process? Who were the agencies providing infrastructural support for mentoring Murale, among others, in and through Bright Young Things? What would have been the expected objectives and outcomes for such support? Was Murale’s auditioned participation at Bright Young Things an outcome of a prior specialist rearing (specific instrumental proficiency in a specified genre), or was this an occasion for Murale to articulate an aggregation of multiple instrumental and genre pathways? What agencies were involved in Murale’s enablement: familial, governmental—school in-curricular, co-curricular, vendor-in-school, national arts council in-school—programmes, private enterprise and peer teaching and learning, to name but a few? Murale’s prominence and pathways—through Rajaratnam’s study—identify connections Murale made and/or missed via the diverse agents and agencies. It draws out issues of practices of the arts, between specialist and generalist endeavour, and making connections between current endeavour and educational curricula. Finally, Murale’s enablement raises questions of personhood in artistic aspiration and endeavour in current priorities of policy and practice.

In no way do we believe in a fine-arts system; we believe in very diverse problems whose solutions are found in heterogeneous arts.

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 331)