How can we use music to inspire expression and creativity?
Interestingly, we can extend this to a larger question: how can we use any sensory experience to inspire expression and creativity?
During my time as a teacher, I have been exposed to ideas for expressing what we experience through different senses. With regards to what we see, we do this all the time. However, we can also set activities that involve students describing, perhaps through words or art, what is perceived by touch or smell.
Expressions of sensory experience can be useful for appreciation of the real world, relaxation, and creativity at all ages, even for adults. In fact, I have participated in workshops in which we, as teachers, have undertaken them ourselves. Nevertheless, they can be especially powerful in the early years.
We return to music, which is our focus today. Of course, there are multiple ways it can be used. We have the singing, dancing, and playing of instruments that it requires or inspires. Students could also be encouraged to mime or act out words. Its meaning could be used as the basis for artistic creation in many forms. Further, there is the idea of personal adaptation — rhythms or lyrics can be interpreted individually.
I recently allowed students to respond to music through drawing.
Drawing is something else that can be especially powerful for young children. It can be used to express ideas of all kinds. Indeed, before writing develops, it is a powerful way for them to express their thinking, which we often use to allow them to show their knowledge and reflections. In this activity, it came together with music.
I played four songs for my students, chosen to give a variety of different feels. The task was to draw anything they thought or felt when listening to each song.
Leading into the activity, I introduced the artist Wassily Kandinsky and the idea of abstract art — that it does not necessarily have to depict real things, but can simply express thoughts and feelings freely. I modeled how this could be done with colour and shapes. I then explained that our task was to draw what we thought or felt as we heard the songs.
When we began the activity, a range of responses emerged. Some students focused purely on abstract use of colours, others drew more “real” pictures, some responded to the lyrics, and some took a more diverse approach.
What can be taken from this? Well, never forget the importance of allowing many and new methods for young students — and indeed those of all ages — to express themselves. Consider how music and other sensory experiences can inspire expression and creativity, either by directly interpreting and showing the experience — letting others know what it was like — or simply producing freer work under the conditions it creates.
Allowing students to draw their response to music can support different approaches. They can directly draw what they hear. They can draw what they think or feel when hearing it. Alternatively, they can simply draw with the music as a background to subconsciously inspire them. This balance between structure — a specific task for guidance and inspiration — and freedom in interpretation and implementation can be applied across multiple areas in teaching where we aim to encourage expression and creativity. It is something to always reflect on.
On an interesting note, regarding abstract art: while sometimes we might want to teach our students very specific techniques, in other cases, it may be better to relax our definition of abstract slightly. This activity was introduced as abstract art, but what turned out to be important was that students had the freedom to express their experience as they liked, without needing to draw something very specific or concrete. Perhaps that was abstract enough after all.
