African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (Feb 2019)
From crayons to canvas: the enlightenment of children at an arts festival.
Abstract
From crayons to paintings: Arts festivals and the promotion of children's art "Every child is an artist, but the problem is how to stay an artist when we grow up - Pablo Picasso". Art forms part of cultural history and education (Hetland & Winner, 2001), but also has valuable meaning for young people (Giddens, 1991) by expressing themselves about things they reflect on themselves and the world in which they live (Dobbs, 1998.) It is also a form of communication of how visual arts are seen as language and the how the artists opinions, feelings of expressing their ideas is brought to the fore. Bowen et al. (2013) state that although recent trends reduce exposure to art, it may be primarily due to the curtailment of school-based art programs. The latter proposes that children should be exposed to art by visiting museums, art galleries and cultural institutions and that it is important to teach them how to interpret and create visual arts messages at an early age (National Art Education, 2016). Only a small percentage of parents take their children to these types of institutions as artificial exposure and learn to experience art. While tourism research is increasing, including the perspectives of children, the voices of young preschool children are still lacking. Due to the government's constraints on funding for the arts, this has led to the rise of arts festivals. The private sector has also entered the market strongly, although not everyone can afford to do so. Festivals are just one platform whereby artists can promote their art, including singing, dance, visual arts and theatre. One such festival is Aardklop National Arts Festival, which has been held in South Africa since 1998. In 2016, Aardklop created an art safari to expose visual arts to young children between the ages of 6 and 13 years. The aim of this study was thus to determine the exposure that children find in art and whether they have learned something about visual arts either formally or as a leisure activity. A qualitative, experimental method of data collection was used to gather information from participating children, through a semi-structured interview before and after the art safari.
