Overcoming the small-town mindset:

by Amy Puffenberger
former AEC ApprenticeTeaching children through media arts education.

Similar to many in the field, I grew up loving movies because they were my connection to the world. If there was a story to be told, the movies could do it. After all, what better way to connect with millions of people world wide than through an art form that is subtle in its communicative power yet still effective? Being a filmmaker was a dream afforded to few, an art form that had to be studied diligently to be fully understood. This fascination with the seemingly untouchable world of media was amplified by growing up in a small town in Michigan with little access to any form of media education.

For as long as I could remember growing up, I wanted to work in film. When I got to high school, I told my guidance counselor this. He told me to become a lounge singer on a cruise ship. I have yet to make the connection. I wonder how much this mindset has changed over the years? I mention this not to berate my guidance counselor, but as an example of how the small-town mindset often works. Making movies and being an artist for a living isn't necessarily frowned upon, it just isn't understood. This lack of understanding can be devastating to a child. With no other support systems in place, I fear that many of these children with a passion for the media arts simply give up.

Even with the power to freely create and distribute media content whenever desired through the many forms of new technology, rural children often still lack any formal education in media arts in the important, formative primary and secondary school years.  How can we engage children in more rural areas who have little or no access to any form of media arts education and who may only ever be exposed to one media arts program? More importantly, how can we support children from rural areas who have a desire to pursue the media arts?

Building on the Positive Core of the Media Arts developed in 2006-2007, I propose the use of four methods, a new 4P's for all of you marketing gurus out there. Though these concepts may not be new to the field, they are crucial for actively engaging and sustaining truly effective rural media arts education.

Personalize
This concept goes deeper with children today, who are in a constant state of information overload. Sure, there are commercials and shows everywhere that want to hear their opinions. All they need to do is text a message to five numbers on the screen. This isn't an opinion, it's buy-in. It's not to say that this type of marketing is not occasionally well-intentioned, but it doesn't truly engage children. It seems that too often we as adults forget how intelligent and insightful children can be when given the opportunity to be so. Some of the work that I have seen come out of media literacy courses and visual arts students who are eight years old is truly amazing. How refreshing it must be for children to be given the opportunity to have their voices heard, and not be told that they are right or wrong. This sense of empowerment is especially important in rural areas, where more opportunities to engage with the community and freedom of expression through artistic mediums are not as prevalent for children.

Part of History
Depending on the region, this may be more difficult for some than others. However, it seems that there is history being made everywhere these days. In the grand scheme of things, this history may not all be epic but is important nonetheless. Most often, this can be accomplished through documentary filmmaking. Giving children a camera and letting them record their own version of history teaches valuable production skills and creates lasting impressions. Allowing children to be a part of a historic event is consistent with personalizing the media they create because it is their take on history being made. Particularly for children in rural areas, who again may be slightly disconnected from events taking place in bigger cities, this is a crucial opportunity for them to become more engaged in civic discourse.
    
Pop-Culture    
In many ways, this one kind of goes without saying, but I still think it warrants mention here. At a recent workshop I attended, one visual arts teacher from a local suburban school discussed how she had structured numerous lesson plans around Beatles- themed music and art. The best part was, the students were asked to respond to the music and images in their own interpretive way, rather than simply reiterating the same material. This type of incorporation is almost second nature to the media arts. In fact, many of the best media pieces are created in response to pop-culture trends. Though no program should be based solely on pop-culture, it is especially important to include in introductory courses for rural area students simply because it is the best-recognized form of media. Allowing these children to critically respond to pop-culture breaks down the passive viewing barrier that is most often perceived as pop-culture media entertainment.    

Process, not Product
Of all four concepts, this may be the most difficult to institute. Although the media arts are, at their very essence, process-based learning, this form of learning still runs counter to many of the ingrained habits that are the current standardized-test based K-12 educational system. The important point here isn't to just reward the final product, but rather the process as a whole. As much as I may have despised them at the time, what always proved to be most useful for me were the self-assessments that were commonplace in nearly all of my undergraduate film courses. This focus on self-assessment can be duplicated for younger children's programs as well, as I have seen mentioned in various K-12 arts education workshops over the past year. These types of assessment may be most crucial to programs centered around rural area children because they require a high degree of introspection and realization; the very types of self-realization that may spark a child's passion for the media arts.

Though these four principles may not engage every child all of the time, they do take a right step in the direction of engaging children in the public discourse and reinforcing a sense of power over mass communications that children who grow up in small towns so often lack. At the end of the day, at the very least, these four programmatic elements combined will instill in rural children, those who most often succumb to the notion of one-way media communication, the understanding that they too have the power at any given moment to become active media participants, tellers of their own story.

This article was originally published by the National Alliance for Media Art + Culture on April 12, 2010.