Art as a Tool
Each new term begins with a school-wide workshop week, where students and teachers come together, face shared challenges, and work in silence on concentration, patience, and perseverance.
The workshops have become a crucial tool in our functioning. They are a way for the school to reconnect and interact; they set the themes which will be developed in different classes throughout the term, as well as setting the tone for the attitude we wish to have as a collective.
“True art means the expression of beauty in the material world. In a world wholly converted, that is to say, expressing integrally the divine reality, art must serve as the revealer and teacher of this divine beauty in life.”
~ The Mother
The reversal
Unlike conventional schooling, where tests conclude a term, and students must provide answers; Last School begins each term with a collective quest.
The workshop week becomes an entry into the term’s theme. These workshops act as a sort of psychological test, an occasion which demands that the students and teachers develop qualities of goodwill, concentration, perseverance, a sense of responsibility and wonder.
Through this week we find the questions which we will explore during the term.
Silence
We seek to create an environment in which the mind is distracted as little as possible. Each participant has the responsibility to be silent and allow the others to concentrate on the work. Even if reactions arise and there are emotions at play, the individual takes into account the collective and tries to offer the best of themselves.
“Especially at our age. The age that we are from 13 to 19 we need to open up ourselves. And I think art helps many people in that way to open up.
And not only to open up others to you but also to yourself, it helps a lot. And for me I’m not at all an art person before I joined Last School but then once I joined, it really helped and yeah it’s changing me.
And also finding me at the same time to understand yourself better and to not be confused about things in life
or about yourself.”
~ Zea, Student
Why Art?
And the insistence on Beauty
When art was first proposed in Last School in the early 90’s, it was with the intention not to teach kids art, but to use it as a tool to bring much needed discipline to the rather wild Auroville teenagers of the day, as well as to rein in the energies of life through the aesthetic sense of harmony and beauty.
Thus, art came into Last School as a tool to channel rebellion and reign in the vital being. We continue to use it as a medium to look inwards and to work on the self.
Organizing matter helps to bring order to that which is immaterial. Just as one cleans one’s home to restructure one’s thoughts, so is it with the school’s physical environment.
Our insistence on beauty in all corners of the school has created a base we consistently come back to, as the habit of caring for a physical space and materials we use quickly slips from our minds as we busy ourselves with routine.
We seek to enhance the space, rather than decorate it, and through the attention brought, encourage the sense of observation and wonder.
Beauty has truly become a key in our approach to education.
Areas of Focus
Areas of Focus