SMART SCKOOL is a multi-faceted creative hybrid incorporating all aspects inherent in the art of living life - be that acquiring common sense knowledge, life experiences and academic styles of attaining knowledge. Everyday activities are filled with value and opportunities to be creative and learn, it is just a matter of bringing awareness and validity to every moment life has to offer.
Being Creative with Language
The name SMART SCKOOL serves as a creative metaphor that explores language and incorporates wordplay to reveal mixed meanings and to use language in a creative way. The word “ART is the root of SMART”. The word “school” represents traditional institutions of learning. Some people love school, some not so much. SMART SCKOOL programs focus on learning being fun rather than feeling like work so we changed the “h” in the word school to a “k” SCKOOL. Now “it’s KOOL to be SMART” and certainly ART is KOOL.
Art as the Global Language: The ABC's of Artistic Mediums of Expression.
In the past, traditional tools of communication were the ABC's. Today in a global world, art provides a universal form of communication as art transcends the boundaries of verbal and text based traditional language, as everyone would be required to be multilingual in the extreme based on each country’s distinct language. Art is accessible to everyone in that it uses visual and conceptual pictures and symbols using the five senses.
It is important to lead by example, and through SMART SCKOOL we offer participants and people in the community an approach emphasizing “Love, Compassion & Respect”.
The SMART SCKOOL method of guiding people involves the identification of the participant’s creative interests and skill sets, open dialogue to stimulate the exchange of ideas between participants within a group setting, the encouragement to believe in personal goals, continual support through the discovery process and the creative tools for success.
When participants, especially those who were once isolated, begin to feel they are a valuable part of a group of people who relate based on similar experiences they begin to feel empowerment through a renewed sense of self-confidence and the ability to believe they can trust that anything is possible.
Learning art is not just about how to draw or paint, but most importantly to learn how to see. Being aware of the world around you makes art not just simply a process of extending an arm to hold a pencil to paper, but an important lesson in how to pay acute attention to details.
Many people are under the impression that the study of art is only concerned with the production of beautiful objects that enhance the home or document the social, political or religious events of a time and the impact on the human condition. In fact, art is a discipline that investigates, considers and contributes concepts to all professional disciplines such as design, science, math, medicine, engineering, physics, technology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics - essentially everything involving the physical, mental and spiritual world. Therefore, art is the way to form the wheel.
Creativity exists in everyone. How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh I’m not creative at all; I can ONLY draw stick people.” Although stick people are considered by many as too simple to be classified as art they represent your personal expression and therefore have expressive power and legitimacy. Creation is a mental process commencing with contemplation sparking inspiration concluding with the cultivation of an idea.
As biological organisms we were designed to embrace creativity based on the fact that the human brain is composed of the right hemisphere – the creative and intuitive - and left hemisphere – the analytical and intellectual side. Logically, when one side is not used and is devalued for the sake of the other balance is sacrificed mentally and physically. Without both there would be no innovation.