Politics/art/thinking= lots to think about

I attended the Columbia College Teaching Artist Conference last week and during a panel discussion one of the questions was, “Do you see your work as a teaching artist as inherently political?” Now wait a moment, maybe consider your thoughts……… ok so the first answer to this question by one of the panel speakers was: “Everything you do in this field has political implications.” Interesting response, loaded response. This was then elaborated on, “politics want the status quo, art disrupts that”. I share that thought because how amazing and eloquent is that!! A solid yet expanding definintion of what it is that we do as teaching artists, as artists. What I was thinking about in relation to this was in connection with some of the challenges that President Obama encountered when he was our democratic candidate last year. The whole Ayers situation raised so many interesting realities of our now hyper connected society that we live in. Now that everything that we do is recorded, noted, catalogued young people growing up have a hightened awareness of how their choices have implications that could be held against them in the future. I recall last year a conversation in another class when someone was working to get signatures for planned parenthood support and a high school student said they do support pro-choice organizations but that they cannot put their name down on a paper because they are interested in a career in politics and they know that a signature like that would marry them to this cause. Wow! Now I think that we do need to work on fostering a greater sense of accountability for our actions from youth straight into adulthood, but I find that there is also a sadness to the thought process of this high school student in the planned parenthood situation. If youth cannot feel like they can explore and support, change and amend their values and beliefs as they grow as people then geez that’s a whole lot of pressure! Now getting back to this idea that “politics want status quo and art distrupts that”- I know there is a connection here but I’m struggling to make it. Perhaps what I’m trying to get at is: if one identifies as an artist, people seem to have a more understanding view of why someone might explore their political views in their work. Why are we looking at artists differently than this high school student- why can’t he explore his political views by signing that petition or other petitions that he believes in at this point in his life, its where he is right now...