Dr. Benjamin Bolden is a composer, educator, and music enthusiast. An associate professor with the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University and Chair for Arts and Learning for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Ben’s research focuses on the arts and the role it plays in transformative education.
Ben has held the position of UNESCO Chair in Arts and Learning since 2016. While in this position, Bolden joined the Sustainable Development Goals Advisory Committee at Queen’s where he supports—and works to implement—the UN’s SDGs at Queen’s.
A recent project Ben led in his role as the UNESCO Chair was finding ways to illustrate how the arts can promote peace and sustainable development. After working countless hours, Bolden and his team developed a teaching guide, Arts for Transformative Education: A Guide for Teachers from the UNESCO Associated Schools Network. This guide illustrates how the research-informed Arts for Transformative Education model works and includes examples of Transformative Education in real-world contexts. The guide also includes step-by-step guidelines for teachers to activate “arts learning to empower transformative education” in their classrooms.
One example from this guide works with elements of drama and storytelling. As stated in the guide, “Students worked together, under the supervision of their Drama coach and Language teachers, to create and perform a play about children’s rights.” This not only utilizes and unites the Language and Drama curricula, but also sparked creativity and passion within the students. They were able to take something they were passionate about, was relevant to the curriculum, and make it their own.
At the heart of everything UNESCO does is the support, promotion, and exercise of peace and sustainable development. Working on this guide meant Ben spent a lot of time looking at these ideas and understanding how they present themselves in education. Completing this research impacted Ben as both an educator and learner. Ben explains, “working on this teaching guide helped me realize the importance of focusing on what I wanted to learn.” Ben’s perspective on pedagogy was also impacted while working on this guide, “I was able to step back and see the differences and commonalities with teaching and learning in different parts of the world.” This allowed Ben to offer a theory of teaching and learning that is useful and meaningful to teachers, while encompassing diversity.
Ben hopes that this guide will serve as a tool for thinking about how to meaningfully structure learning experiences for students. He hopes educators around the world will use this guide and take the first steps towards transformative education. He explains, “this guide is certainly something that educators can latch onto and use as a framework. ”
Ben offered advice for those teachers looking to implement the arts into their classrooms but aren’t sure where to begin: “think about what the students will be doing, how it will be relevant to them, what you are hoping they will take away, and what contextual factors will help the learning happen.”
This may be something outside of your comfort zone, which is why Ben and his team created this guide! Utilizing this teaching guide can promote meaningful and even transformative learning. The arts are a way for you to connect with your students, community, and even yourself!