One day Tessa Alexander Sloane-Seale's teen daughter came home from school and told her something no artist-parent wants to hear."Mommy, there are kids in my class who don't know what a collage is," Sloane-Seale recalled in a recent interview.
A respected artist who gives private lessons in the subject to children and teens and who encourages her own children to develop their skills in the area, Sloane-Seale understands the transformative power of art for both individuals and society.
"Art makes children confident; it allows them to creatively express themselves," she said.
"In today's world you look around, the person who's a little bit more ahead is a creative thinker. All these big companies are looking for creative-thinking people."
An early foundation in art is important, but many children in T&T aren't getting it. Seeing that there was no local art textbook for primary schools, Sloane-Seale decided to take matters into her own hands. She put together art lessons she'd designed for her own students over the years into a textbook for young children.
Kids Create: Art for Primary Schools is the only current primary school art textbook produced specifically for T&T. It's published by Archimedes Publishers Ltd, an arm of Charran's Book Stores.Sloane-Seale and Charran's are working to get Kids Create on the official booklist of the Ministry of Education. So far they've managed to get it in around 100 schools throughout T&T.
Such a book has become particularly important since art–previously something seen as an optional time-filler in primary schools–in 2014 became one of the subjects being used in the continuous assessment component (CAC) of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA). Children's performance in art throughout Standard Four is henceforth contributing to their final SEA scores.
Sloane-Seale helped train teachers in preparation for the visual arts CAC.Teachers–who often don't have training in teaching art at the primary school level–welcome Kids Create, she said.
"In speaking to teachers throughout the years, a lot of them expressed interest in wanting to do more art with kids, but they just didn't know what to do. They didn't have the skills to do it," said Sloane-Seale.
"Art had no resource book for teachers in primary school, unlike social studies and science."
Kids Create, as one would expect, is brightly illustrated. It's separated into six units, each a different colour and covering a different aspect of art: drawing, collage, painting, pattern making/ design, sculpture, and craft. It's illustrated with examples Sloane-Seale created for the book herself or pieces her daughters have done over the years.
In addition to teaching children about art, Sloane-Seale felt it was important that children in T&T learn about their own culture and environment. So the book's projects include a landscape of the Savannah, a Carnival collage, a moko jumbie stick puppet and rainforest animal sculptures.
The need to localise the book also came from experiences Sloane-Seale had with her own children and the kind of art projects they did in school.
"I remember one time at Christmas they came home with a snowman," she said. "I was, like, we don't have snow in Trinidad!
"When I do art with kids I also try to incorporate their understanding where they're from and therefore having an appreciation (of it)," she added.
Sloane also felt it was important to show that art isn't separate from learning and could be linked to other subjects.
"Art is very cross-curriculum," she said. "So a lot of the projects you can tie in with social studies. A lot of the projects you can tie in even with science, then even with things like math and creative writing.
"Have a child do a picture about something, then tell them to write a story about it," she suggested.
"Art lends itself to working with anything you are learning in school in any other subject matter."
Charran's founder and CEO Reginald Charran spoke enthusiastically about Kids Create and its prospects. Even though the book isn't officially on the Ministry of Education's booklist, he took on the task of publishing it based on the recommendation of curriculum officers in the ministry. The book took six months to edit, design and print and most people are impressed by its quality, he said.
"It's a good book," he said. "It is geared towards students as well as teachers. The language is simple."
Charran's is also publishing a Kids Create workbook as a companion to the textbook. The intention is for the book to be one in a series that includes levels for younger students.Kids Create: Art for Primary Schools is currently only available in Charran's Book Store in St James.
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