Arts

Learning creative skill sets is important different reasons. Jacmel is the arts and cultural capital of Haiti. All of the staff and founders are artists. Arts provides a platform of self expression. These are the obvious reasons why we focus on the arts.

Many of our students go on to become business managers, doctors, lawyers, historians, politicians, therapists, as well as artists. Why is art important to all of these students, in fact every student? Many research projects have proven that learning creativity early in life is important for the advancement of the individual. Learning arts helps to develop cognitive thinking processes in the brain. It also helps develop communication skills. During the process of making an artwork, the artist goes through a series of problem solving to get their desired effect. The artist must also choose in detail what is given to the viewer so their message can be transmitted. Therefor learning the arts helps to nurture successful problem solvers, citizens and innovators.

The majority of Haitian schools rely on memorization instead of comprehensive understanding of a subject. The information is accepted by the student as true. This means there is no reason to explore the contextual realities of the information. In US schools we talk about a subject, ask questions, and in doing so find relevancy beyond the information itself. The students cannot apply much of the information to their daily lives because they have not been taught to “think” about it. They have not been given the opportunity to develop cognitive connections in the brain’s thinking process.

A healthy future in Haiti means healthy thinkers. Art in its many different forms can provide this crucial life skill and it will benefit not only the artists, but the doctors, lawyers, educators and entrepreneurs in Haiti’s future. That is sustainability!

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