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Arts in Education and Creativity: A literature review

Authors: Mike Fleming

Institution: Durham University

Full Reference: Fleming, M. (2010) Arts in Education and Creativity: A literature review. 2nd ed. London: Creativity, Culture and Education.

Report summary

This literature review offers an historical and theoretical overview of arts education, its place in the English curriculum, and its relationship with creative learning and creativity education. It centres on official policy discourse and attempts to outline key moments and movements in the history of arts education over the last 120 years. One of the author’s key messages is that we should not lump all the arts together, short synopses of four discrete arts disciplines make this argument very clearly.

The review discusses the concept of creativity in arts, looking at how the term has been used and interpreted and what this signals about the arts in education. The author concludes that ‘a vibrant and successful future for the arts in education must lie partly in effective support from politicians and policy makers but also in developing understanding and practice through continued debate and dialogue.’

Author: Mike Fleming

Full reference: Fleming, M. (2010) Arts in Education and Creativity: A literature review . 2nd ed. London: Creativity, Culture and Education.

Summary of key findings

Methodology.

Literature Review

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Visual Literacy and Art Education: A Review of the Literature

"What is currently being done by art and design researchers and educators to engage learners in the pursuit of visual and media literacy? This paper looked specifically at visual arts education and related fields to determine what trends, motivations and criticisms exist that either encourage or dissuade scholars from taking up or promoting visual literacy. Several prominent themes were found under the banner of ‘Visual Literacy’ that are discussed in detail; The Rise in Visual Information and Consumption, The Inseparability of Visual Literacy and Popular Visual Culture, The Importance of Learning to Deconstruct our Visual World and The Role of Technologies and New Media. The major themes are then followed by further discussion on The Benefits of Visual literacy as well as implications for future study. "

Related Papers

Rebekah Bainbridge

James Elkins

This book is an edited volume, with contributions by Barbara Stafford, W.J.T. Mitchell, Jon Simons, Jonathan Crary, and others. It was the product of a combined conference and exhibition of the same name, which has generated another book, "Visual Practices Across the University" (which is uploaded, in its entirety, on this site) and "Visual Cultures" (not yet published). "Visual Literacy" is intended to survey the meanings of the expression, and related notions such as visual competence. Some contributors are interested in the theory of literacy when it pertains to the visual; others in its rhetoric; and others in its implementation at college and secondary school level. The book is intended to serve as a resource for conversations about what comprises minimal or desirable visual ability, competence, or literacy in a university or secondary-school setting. This text is the introduction, the only part of the book I wrote--and so the only part I will upload here.

British Journal of Educational Technology

Maria D . Avgerinou

Journal of Art & Design Education

Doug Boughton

Essentials of Teaching and Integrating Visual and Media Literacy

Alexa Miller

Michael P M Mhlanga

The presence of visual elements in today’s teaching and learning is increasing as the integration of images and visual presentations with text in textbooks, instructional manuals, classroom presentations, and computer interfaces broadens. Research reported in educational literature demonstrates that using visuals in teaching results in greater degree of learning. The basic premise of this body of research is the concept of visual literacy, introducing visual literacy and stratagems to teach it in secondary schools.

Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

Mary Hamilton

International Journal of Education Through Art

Andrea Kárpáti

Jamie Steane

Denise R Newfield

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What you need to know about culture and arts education

Despite the obvious essential linkages between culture and education, they are still not sufficiently integrated into education policies and school curricula in many countries globally. These two fields are often considered as separate policy entities and trajectories. Culture and arts education, the result of the two complementary ecosystems, has the potential to bridge this gap.

UNESCO convened the World Conference on Culture and Arts Education in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates from 13 to 15 February 2024 where the first-ever global framework in this area was adopted. Here is what you need to know about this essential issue. 

Why is culture and arts education essential?

Learners engaged in culture and arts education have better academic and non-academic learning outcomes.  Engagement in various art forms , such as music, dance, and visual arts, can enhance academic achievements, reading skills, creative and critical thinking, agility and collaboration skills. Engagement in such education also correlates with improved attendance, stress reduction, resilience, perseverance, and classroom behaviours.

Culture and arts education expands the essence of learning and makes it fun by going beyond classrooms and traditional educational approaches from lifelong learning, to technical and vocational education and training (TVET).  The theatre stage can be a learning space, NFT art can be a promising career, and indigenous ways of knowing and being can, and should, find their way in the curriculum.

Culture and arts education makes learning meaningful by connecting rural with urban, local with global. It plays a crucial role in valorizing and preserving one’s own culture, heritage and traditions while at the same time reflecting on them in the modern world, in the digital era, understanding everyone’s contribution and uniqueness. 

What are the forms culture and arts education can take?

Culture and arts education encompasses learning about, in and through culture and the arts. Therefore, it can occur across subjects, at all levels of education and in various settings. For example, this process is no longer confined to classrooms: museums, art galleries, libraries and cultural heritage sites are considered equal places of learning, whereas artists, cultural professionals and practitioners play an essential role in transmitting knowledge. Culture and arts education engages learners with built and natural heritage, living expressions, and the cultural and creative industries, promoting intercultural dialogue and linguistic diversity, both online and offline.

By incorporating indigenous knowledge and practices, arts education validates and enlivens diverse cultural perspectives. In Indonesia, school students on Java Island can learn more about their heritage from arts education programmes that familiarize them with the traditional art of shadow puppet storytelling called  wayang kulit , from UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list. 

How can culture and arts education build skills for the future?

Culture and arts education opens up new employment opportunities.  50 million jobs are created by cultural and creative industries worldwide, and more young people are now employed in the sector than in any other economic activity. While not its primary focus,  culture and arts education cultivates skills such as observation, collaboration, and reflection that are conducive to creativity and adaptability, which are increasingly valued in the modern job market. 

It also builds vital socio-emotional skills to thrive in the world of tomorrow. Research shows that such education fosters compassion for others and empathy. It allows learners to introspect, take different perspectives and develop different ways of understanding the world. Participation in arts activities has also been linked to higher civic engagement, social tolerance, and respectful behaviours towards diversity. 

How can culture and arts education contribute to peace and sustainability?

By connecting local with global and fostering dialogue among generations and cultures, culture and arts education can contribute to peaceful, just, inclusive and sustainable societies. It also offers transformative avenues for reimagining ways of living harmoniously with the earth and preserving social cohesion, which is paramount during times of interrelated global challenges, such as social isolation or environmental crises. For example, freely accessible digitized archives of the leading museums helped learners in different parts of the world connect with other cultures and enrich their learning experiences.

How does arts education address socioeconomic disparities in education?

Integrating culture and arts education into education systems  can help bridge the achievement gap between higher and lower-income students. Research indicates that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who engage in arts education demonstrate higher academic performance, graduation rates, and motivation to pursue further education.

Culture and arts education can unveil new opportunities and career paths for learners of all ages. For example, technical and vocational education and training in arts and crafts could be a critical social lift, opening new employment opportunities in the context of persisting social inequalities and crises. For example,  UNESCO’s Transcultura program me awards scholarships to young cultural professionals in 17 countries so that they can gain new skills and pursue careers in cultural and creative industries. 

What is the role of UNESCO?

Since its creation, UNESCO has been championing major forward-looking policy transformation processes in culture and education, reaffirming them as global public goods at the forefront of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Some of the key highlights include the UNESCO  MONDIACULT Conference, initiatives within the  Transforming Education Summit and the revision of  the Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development.

As a logical next step after the adoption of the 2006 Lisbon Road Map on Arts Education and the 2010 Seoul Agenda, UNESCO convened the  World Conference on Culture and Arts Education to mobilize political commitment around culture and arts education as a powerful lever to transform learning and shape critical skills for future generations. 

As a result of the Conference, UNESCO Member States adopted the new UNESCO Framework on Culture and Arts Education . This guidance document provides a set of principles all stakeholders can follow for shaping and further institutionalizing culture and arts education. It outlines specific goals such education should pursue and concrete dimensions where synergetic links between culture and education should be fostered for the benefit of all learners.

• World Conference on Culture and Arts Education  
• UNESCO’s work on  Culture and Education  

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• Art Education in the Classroom

The Importance of Art Education in the Classroom

November 30, 2023

That deceptively simple, four-word query confronts a topic that’s occupied some of the world’s greatest creators and philosophers since Plato. How we answer this question can have much bigger consequences than whether you get to buy a piece of artwork from Banksy’s online store. The issue of art’s value becomes far more pressing when policymakers and administrators decide how to allocate time and funding for art education in schools.

Art teachers must be ready to advocate for committing the necessary resources to prioritize the value of creativity in the classroom. You may have to explain the importance of art education in a school’s curriculum and present the research to back up those claims. We can become powerful advocates for the power of art and improved student outcomes by investigating the many benefits that come out of integrating more creativity into the school day and improving our classroom strategies .

Why Is Art Education In Schools Important?

Anyone who’s passionate about the arts recalls formative moments of experiencing a work of art pushing through a creative challenge. When we’re exposed to remarkable artworks or have opportunities to create, we find that art is crucial to individual growth and development and can even impact our health.

A literature review from Frontiers in Psychology outlined several studies linking aesthetic experiences with broad improvements in subjects’ emotional states that promote physical and psychological well-being. Giving learners the time, space, and materials for creative expression can lower stress, improve memory, and make them feel more socially connected. Instructors can build their careers on bringing those experiences to students in a variety of settings, like galleries, museums, or events organized by nonprofit and community organizations.

Appreciation for art also makes a significant difference in people’s lives on a macro level. Entire societies may stand to gain from an investment in the arts. Drawing on data from the General Social Survey, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Public Administration linked participation as either an audience member or creator to higher levels of civic engagement and social tolerance . This work suggests that children learning how to draw, paint, sing, or just appreciate the works made by others can help us become not just happier and healthier, but also better people. Learn about UF’s Online Master of Arts in Art Education program

How Does Art Education Help Students?

When surveyed by the nonprofit organization Americans for the Arts, members of the U.S. public overwhelmingly agreed that the arts are one aspect of a well-rounded K-12 education . In addition, a recent study conducted in Houston public schools showed that students who participated in arts education see the following benefits:

• Improved writing achievement
• Reduced disciplinary infractions
• More student engagement
• Improved college aspirations
• No drop in standardized test scores

Yet, participation in the visual and performing arts is often treated as merely supplemental to other aspects of learning. As a result, there are major differences in access to art and music classes across the country.

2019 findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that eighth graders in the Northeast were much more likely to report being enrolled in a visual arts course than those in the South. Disparities were also tied to race, ethnicity, family income, and whether a school is located in a city, suburb, town, or rural area.

Meanwhile, the Nation’s Report Card shows that U.S. students continue to score lower than many of their peers in Europe and Asia on standardized tests despite years of pressure on educators to close the achievement gap. But seeking to improve student performance in math and reading does not have to come at the expense of art education.

In fact, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, argue that instruction becomes more effective when educators integrate creative activities and make them central to academic development. Across disciplines, including STEM, there’s room to reimagine classes with a strong emphasis on drawing, painting, playing music, performing drama, and other creative pursuits. Encouraging students to use their imagination can help them actively engage with new concepts and discover connections between ideas as well as provide advantages for their social and emotional well-being.

One example of effectively integrating arts and creative expression with other fields as a pedagogical strategy can be seen in the collaboration between University of Florida faculty members Susan K. Jacobson, who studies wildlife ecology and conservation, and Robert C. Mueller, who teaches printmaking. The UF professors collaborated on an interdisciplinary project in climate change communication in which groups of graduate students from both the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and the College of the Arts visited the university’s Seahorse Key Marine Laboratory. The students participated in learning activities like scientific lectures, discussions, and making collages before working in small groups to create environmental communication materials for visitors.

As this example shows, students benefit from learning to embrace insights from multiple disciplines, and this can be valuable when they go on to pursue jobs. A 2019 survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers showed that employers are interested in hiring professionals with skills that can be strengthened through participation in the arts, such as written communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and taking initiative. Art teachers can help students become more well-rounded and capable individuals by teaching them to develop original ideas through creative projects and practices.

The Importance of Art Education in Early Childhood and Beyond

It’s never too soon to introduce kids to the possibilities of creative expression. As outlined in a literature review from the National Endowment for the Arts, a variety of studies demonstrate the value of embedding artistic practice into early childhood education . Imaginative activities for young learners can lead to better skills in social interactions and emotional regulation.

Lessons in the arts introduce K-12 students to problem-solving techniques, which help them to see the world in new ways, and provide access to creative ways of knowing. Kids discover how art can communicate their own ideas and may become interested in creating increasingly realistic depictions and mastering new techniques. By high school, young artists can think critically about their own work and that of others, establishing a unique point of view and a sense of community with other creative individuals.

The National Core Arts Standards provide a framework for advancing students’ artistic understanding . This structure breaks down the developmental stages from Pre K through high school into 10 anchor standards. In each stage, students build creative habits as they learn to:

• Generate and conceptualize artistic ideas and work
• Organize and develop ideas and work
• Refine and complete artistic work
• Select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation
• Convey meaning through the presentation
• Perceive and analyze artistic work
• Interpret intent and meaning
• Apply criteria to evaluate work
• Make art by synthesizing and relating knowledge and personal experiences
• Deepen understanding by relating artistic ideas to societal, historical, and cultural contexts

Pediatrician Dr. Perri Klass outlined the benefits of art education in schools in the New York Times, noting improvements for overall motivation, thinking, and academic achievement . An arts-integrated curriculum that asks students to draw or sing as part of the learning process may enhance their ability to recall material such as scientific principles or vocabulary. Foregrounding creativity can be especially effective for students who struggle to retain information from traditional lectures and reading assignments alone.

Art does matter in the classroom, delivering a wide range of advantages for students. Educators can make the most of that potential by equipping themselves to offer creative practice as a central feature in the curriculum and show decisionmakers how these initiatives can achieve transformative results. The University of Florida’s online Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) program helps teachers make a difference. This program features courses that prepare educators to work in a variety of learning environments , support students of all ages, incorporate digital tools into their pedagogy, and foster critical thinking.

About the Online Master’s in Art Education from the University of Florida

The University of Florida’s online Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) program engages students purposefully in art education theory and practice, contemporary art, and their own studio work. Our dynamic online learning environment fosters meaningful interaction with peers and our world-class faculty as members of a supportive, close-knit community of art educators, artists, cultural workers, and scholars. This flexible program brings you the advanced concepts and immersive, hands-on experiences you need to flourish academically and creatively.

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Perspectives Black History

Harlem is everywhere : episode 3, art & literature.

How did the literature of the Harlem Renaissance play a central role in conversations around Black identity?

Jessica Lynne , Monica L. Miller and John Keene

How did the literature of the Harlem Renaissance play a central role in conversations around Black identity? In this episode we’ll learn about publications like Opportunity , The Crisis , and Fire!! which each promoted a unique political and aesthetic perspective on Black life at the time. We’ll learn about Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston before they became household names and explore how collaboration and conversation between artists, writers, and scholars came to define the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance.

View the objects discussed in the episode and read the complete transcript below .

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VOICE 1 : Night wears a garment, VOICE 2 : All velvet soft, all violet blue . . . VOICE 3 : And over her face she draws a veil VOICE 1 : As shimmering fine as floating dew . . . VOICE 4 : And here and there In the black of her hair,

JESSICA LYNNE : The subtle hands of Night Move slowly in their gem-starred light.

That was “Street Lamps in Early Spring ” written by Gwendolyn Bennett in 1926.

Welcome to Harlem Is Everywhere brought to you by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’m your host Jessica Lynne. I’m a writer and art critic. This is episode three: Art and Literature.

Today writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston seem fully present in our minds as staples in the canon of American literature. But there was a time when they were young and eager, stretching their wings and finding a voice, hoping to place their work in publications like The Crisis , Opportunity ,and Fire!! .

All three of these publications shared a goal of amplifying the voices and images emerging from the Harlem Renaissance. But they didn’t always agree on what stories to tell or who they wanted to tell them to. It was beautiful and it was complicated.

There are just too many talented people from this era to cover in one episode. We’ll speak about members of the younger generation like Hughes and Hurston and we’ll point out foundational figures like Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Spurgeon Johnson and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

We’ll hear from researcher and educator Monica L. Miller:

MONICA L. MILLER:   When Hurston walked in the door, she famously had a red feather boa on, threw that feather boa over her shoulder, and said the words, “Color struck!”

LYNNE: We’ll also speak with writer and professor John Keene:

JOHN KEENE : The writers of Fire!! were not concerned with presenting neat bourgeois representations of Black people.

LYNNE: In the fall of my junior year of high school, all the adults around me wanted a real answer to that existential question: “So, what do you want to do with your life?”

Everyone needed an answer to this question and I was drawing a blank.

Around this time my English teacher assigned Zora Neale Hurston’s novel  Their Eyes Were Watching God . I still have my high-school copy with the black-and-white portrait of Hurston taken by the photographer Carl Van Vechten. In it, Hurston wears a wide-brimmed hat tilted slightly to the right side of her face and a chunky, beaded necklace. I still need this necklace. Her smile is alluring, almost mischievous.

I felt so alive after reading Hurston’s words. I wanted to know everything about this Black Southern woman who depicted on the page so much of what was familiar to me as a Black Southern girl—even if I was living almost sixty years in the future.

Her characters were speaking a Black American English that I’d heard all my life and Hurston took special care to write dialogue in that vernacular throughout the novel.

Zora Neale Hurston (American, 1891–1960). Their Eyes Were Watching God , 1937. Walter O. and Savannah Evans Collection

You know that opening scene when Pheoby meets Janie on the back porch with a plate of food, ready to sit and visit a while? I had seen all the women in my life problem solve and caretake or gather together in much the same way.

So, what did I want to do with my life? I wanted to do whatever Hurston had done. And that included living in New York.

I had known what the Harlem Renaissance was, but immersing myself in Hurston’s life gave me a better sense of the Harlem that she’d encountered in the 1920s, and how it impacted her as an artist.

This was a Harlem that was opening its arms to Black folks from everywhere, including the South, and in doing so was fundamentally changing the cultural landscape of a nation.

If Harlem, if New York, was a place that was special enough for my newfound literary hero, it was special enough for me, too. What was it about these streets and avenues that made Hurston feel at home? How did this uptown neighborhood become the epicenter of the world’s first Black-led modern art movement? In a way, if I wanted to understand Hurston, I needed to understand Harlem.

LYNNE: Monica L. Miller is a professor of English and Africana studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

MILLER: I teach and research African American literature and cultural studies, as well as Afro-diasporic literature and cultural studies. So, my work spans Black identity and culture from the United States into Europe.

LYNNE: In the early 1900s two major civil rights organizations created and distributed literary publications—the National Urban League promoted Opportunity m agazine while the NAACP released The Crisis . These publications had two main goals: to promote the values of the organizations and to offer a platform for established as well as younger Black artists to shine.

MILLER: What was really important about those magazines is that they were as part of the sort of early Black press movement magazines that included news, that included history, artwork, and often literature. So they were really important in terms of being a place where African American community was actually sort of talking to itself, right? And then ultimately you could sort of get the pulse of what was happening.

LYNNE: Not only what was happening in Harlem, but also in other major urban centers in the Northeast. These cities were becoming the home of so many people as a result of the Great Migration. These magazines were knitting together a community of people, similar to how Black-owned newspapers had done in the late 1800s.

MILLER: What was different about these journals, though, is precisely the way that they included the arts and literature.

LYNNE: These publications, like the people they represented and spoke to, weren’t a monolith. They were a mosaic of different styles and themes, ideals, and voices.

Opportunity was almost an extension of The New Negro anthology. This was a publication that looked to shape Black modernity in a powerful way. Charles S. Johnson acted as the editor while Alain Locke helped develop the magazine and was a frequent contributor.

The Crisis was created by W. E. B. Du Bois with Jessie Redmond Fauset acting as the editor.

MILLER: The Crisis is ultimately a relatively—I mean, I think we think about it now, but not at the time—a relatively conservative publication in the way that it balanced both, sort of, internal and external politics.

Du Bois was a proponent of respectability politics, which meant that he was really interested in putting, sort of, the best foot forward. He was very concerned about remaking the image of African Americans, both for themselves, but particularly for a sort of outside audience. So, The Crisis was a magazine that reflected those ideals and ideologies.

Left: Laura Wheeler Waring (American, 1887–1948). Egypt and Spring, Cover of The Crisis , April 1923. Collection of Walter O. and Linda Evans; Right: Laura Wheeler Waring (American, 1887–1948). The Strength of Africa, Cover of The Crisis , September 1924. Collection of Walter O. and Linda Evans

MILLER : When I look at the cover of The Crisis what I’m seeing there is this idea about Africa being the sort of classical base for African American art and culture. If Europe has the Greek and Roman past, African America has the African past. So, we see Egypt and a kind of Africanized version of Greece, which is really fascinating.

LYNNE: The cover of the February 1925 issue of Opportunity by artist Winold Reiss represented a new approach to thinking about West African aesthetics.

The cover features an illustration of a traditional mask framed by geometric patterns in yellow and black.

Winold Reiss (American, born Germany 1886–1953). Cover of Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life , February 1925. Collection of Walter O. and Linda Evans

MILLER: We’re being asked to think about African America as modern, but almost as modern sort of being borrowed and in conversation with the way that Modernist—capital M Modernist—artists had been thinking about and using African aesthetic forms.

LYNNE: Fire!! was something altogether different. The November 1926 cover by Aaron Douglas is of a sphinx and other abstract symbols on a completely black background. This cover demands attention.

MILLER: Here we’re sort of thinking about Africa in an avant-garde way, Like it’s really we’re supposed to be thinking like, oh, you know, this is exciting, this is maybe a little kind of outré. Like, it’s exotifying in some ways, but for the purpose of attraction.

LYNNE: While Opportunity and The Crisis represented more “respectable” values on their covers and in their pages, Fire!! was not at all remotely interested in respectability. It was a place for younger artists to discuss controversial topics like sexuality that the older guard might deem taboo. Here’s John Keene.

KEENE: The writers of Fire!! were not concerned with presenting neat bourgeois representations of Black people. They were interested in—you know, and of course it’s to our benefit—presenting a richer and fuller portrait of Black life at that moment.

So you get representations of working-class and poor Black people. You get representations of the struggles of the Black bourgeoisie. You get overt critiques of racism and White supremacy. You get, for example, with Richard Bruce Nugent, one of the very first works that deals with Black queer sexuality.

MILLER: The legend around Fire!! is that Wallace Thurman, who was a young writer who had come to Harlem from Los Angeles, and Bruce Nugent—who was perhaps the youngest person who was active in the Harlem Renaissance at that time, who had just come to New York from Washington, D.C.—both of them queer men, that they flipped a coin. And whoever got heads was going to write the story about prostitution and whoever got tails was going to write a story about homosexuality. And those were the two stories that they wanted to sort of anchor Fire!! magazine around, which was going to be which was going to be and ultimately turned out to be incredibly controversial at the time.

LYNNE: The artists and writers of Fire!! weren’t simply trying to find an audience amongst their peers. They represented the interests and ideas of an entire generation. A generation less concerned with signaling middle-class values and more concerned with honest expression.

Keene: The Harlem Renaissance writers and artists represented really, you know, Black America at that moment in the urban North in New York. So, you had writers, you know, who were from the West Indies, you had the Caribbean, you had writers who were born in the South. You had writers from New York itself, right, and other northern urban centers. So, you get this incredible mixture of people. And so respectability kind of went out the window!

MILLER: So Fire!! is for the younger Negro artists who want to, as Langston Hughes said in his essay, “The Negro Artists in the Racial Mountain,” who want to express themselves freely. And they don’t care if Black people like it, they don’t care if White people like it. That they’re doing it, right, to be what he said, “free within themselves.”

So, Fire!! is this magazine that includes just like The Crisis and Opportunity essays, poetry, artwork, history. But it does it from a decidedly radical point of view. Ironically, there was only one issue of Fire!! because the issues that were being stored to be sold all over the East Coast or as far as they could get the magazine burned up in a fire.

LYNNE: Yes… Fire!! magazine’s life was cut short due to a fire. But the bond and creative energy that existed amongst the younger generation stayed intact.

MILLER: The younger group of Negro artists who were part of Fire!! magazine were all kind of located in an apartment that was rented out by a sort of older woman in Harlem who was really interested in fostering the arts. Her name was Iolanthe Sydney. She rented apartments at a discount to artists. Aaron Douglas lived in this apartment. I think Bruce Nugent lived there on and off. Hurston was there occasionally. Wallace Thurman was there, Langston Hughes was there.

So, this apartment was was a place where… that was a salon of the younger Negro artists. Important, though, in that apartment was, because of Aaron Douglas and also Bruce Nugent, who were visual artists. The walls were painted by Douglas. There were drawings all over the place that were made by Bruce Nugent. He was the only, sort of, out gay man in the Harlem Renaissance, so his drawings and artwork were very provocative at the time. A lot of naked bodies and sensual depictions of the African American body.

So, they lived in a space that was filled with art, the writers. And the artists lived in a space that was filled with words.

LYNNE: The collaborative spirit of these visual and literary artists allowed their mediums to collide. A chance to explore subjects considered scandalous, and to simply let go.

John Keene has seen this in his own projects.

KEENE: I’ve done two books with visual artists, one of whom is also an amazing poet and one of them is an amazing photographer. I just did a poster with another wonderful photographer. And I feel like one of the things that I gain is a sense of depth, a deeper appreciation for the other mediums and for the medium I’m working in, right?

So, working with a visual artist you come to understand how they see the world, how they see the process of making art. And it informs my own work as a writer, and I believe the reverse is true, as well. The other thing too, I think, that I love about collaboration is it involves a certain amount of surrendering of the ego. You have to step back from the “I” and think in terms of “we”—how can we create—which I think is a great spur for creativity.

LYNNE: Ultimately, these publications were more similar than they were different. Each was dedicated to promoting the arts and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and the artists central to this movement and each had important figures behind their success.

One of them is Jessie Redmond Fauset, a novelist, poet, critic, and editor of The Crisis who is sometimes overshadowed by her male counterparts.

MILLER: Fauset is an incredibly important person in the Renaissance because of the way that she edited that magazine and also solicited work from writers and also encouraged them—like Charles Johnson and Alain Locke did for the Opportunity contest—really fostered a kind of literary environment. And ultimately, she and other people were part of many different kinds of salons that were taking place both in New York and also in Washington, D.C.

LYNNE: The Crisis and Opportunity not only provided a platform through commissioning artists for cover illustrations, they also sponsored contests for writers.

MILLER: And these contests were important because they not only supported artistic work and recognized it, but they were often the vehicle through which many of the writers that we associate with the Renaissance came to New York.

LYNNE: James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Missouri and grew up in various midwestern towns. Raised mainly by his maternal grandmother he developed a love of words early.

While in high school he began to compose the first of a lifetime of short stories, poetry and plays. In his early twenties Hughes moved to New York City to attend Columbia University. Around this time he submitted a poem to The Crisis . It was called “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”

He’d written it as a teenager on a train crossing the Mississippi River. Writing the poem down on the back of an envelope, it seemed to flow out of him like the waters below. You can almost picture him reading the poem softly under his breath as the train headed south.

Here’s Hughes in his own voice reading the “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”:

LANGSTON HUGHES:

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers.

LYNNE: Did he realize that what he’d just written would catapult his career and become one of the defining poems of the era? Hughes ended up submitting this poem to The Crisis after arriving in New York as a twenty year old.

MILLER: There are these moments, famous moments, when we think about the Renaissance.

LYNNE: One of those is when, after reading the poem, Du Bois turns to Fauset and says, “What colored person is there, do you suppose, in the United States who writes like that and is yet unknown to us?”

Langston Hughes has been close to John Keene’s heart throughout his own career. Here’s Keene reflecting on a portrait of a then twenty-four-year-old Hughes by German-born artist Winold Reiss.

This portrait features a young Hughes in a sharp suit seated at a desk with a notebook open… as if the viewer is watching the writer at work. Hughes looks into the distance, in contemplation.

Winold Reiss (American, born Germany, 1886–1953). Langston Hughes , 1925. Pastel on illustration board. National Portrait Gallery, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, Washington D.C.; Gift of W. Tjark Reiss, in memory of his father, Winold Reiss

KEENE: One of the things that it sort of signifies is his centrality, right? He was someone who was a kind of connecting figure for so many different members in what became the Harlem Renaissance, right? But even at his very young age, he was, I think, sort of establishing himself as one of the premier poets of his generation. So it’s sort of fascinating to see, you know, someone capture him at that young age, but also to kind of show the range of who he was through the juxtaposition of the images in the painting. The Cubism in the background and, of course, the pensive young poet in the foreground.

LYNNE: John Keene loves Hughes’s poems, for their approachability, humor, and lyricism.

KEENE: I think it was a combination of the poems’ musicality, their artistry. He’s very gifted in concision, their humor. And also the poems have a political bite. And you don’t have to be, you know, super sophisticated, you can be a child and pick up what he’s saying. So you get all of those elements together, and they make for very powerful and compelling poetry.

I probably encountered Langston Hughes’s poetry first as a small child from my parents and godparents and had been a fan of and loved Hughes’s work ever since.

LYNNE: John Keene didn’t need any prompting recalling Langton Hughes’s poem “Harlem.”

KEENE: So, the opening line, of course, is:

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? — Which, of course, provided Lorraine Hansberry with the title for her great play… Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

And then that final line:

Or does it explode?

LYNNE: Hughes had caught the attention of Du Bois and Fauset at The Crisis . Meanwhile, Hurston made a splash with the editors of Opportunity .

Hurston had previously been published in Opportunity . But in 1925 she entered a short story called “Spunk” and a play called Color Struck to one of the magazine’s literary contests. She won second place in both categories.

Another one of those famous moments in the history of the Harlem Renaissance was at the party celebrating this contest, when Hurston made her debut.

MILLER: When Hurston walked in the door, she famously had a red feather boa on, threw that feather boa over her shoulder, and said the words, “Color struck!” Which was actually the name of the play that she had won second prize for. The whole room turned to look at her. She announced her presence in Harlem with that gesture.

LYNNE: Zora Neale Hurston would become a force of the Harlem Renaissance and American literature more broadly. That night she met Langston Hughes, who would become a great friend. And she made another connection with Barnard College founder and trustee Annie Nathan Meyer.

Monica: And Annie Nathan Meyer, after seeing Hurston circulating in the party, said, you know what? I think that woman is the woman I want to see if I can integrate Barnard College with.

Hurston became Barnard’s first Black student after meeting Annie Nathan Meyer that evening. And for Hurston, securing an education was actually sort of everything. So moving into that room, making that impression, meeting her sort of, you know, soulmate in Langston Hughes, and this vehicle towards education and her ultimate career as both a writer and an anthropologist… Opportunity magazine gave her that opportunity.

LYNNE: She would go on to study anthropology and become the first Black graduate of Barnard College. After getting her degree Hurston wanted to return to the South, where she’d grown up, to document Southern Black life: its folk tales, songs, and stories.

After receiving funding, Hurston drove down South in a little coup nicknamed “Sassy Susie.”

MILLER: There’s a great photograph of her in front of her car with a gun in a holster because she was traveling through the South primarily alone and occasionally needed to to feel protected. Also the car, because sometimes there were not places where a Black person or Black woman in particular could stay—she would stay in the car.

This photograph is a beautiful contrast to a painting found in the exhibition titled Miss Zora Neale Hurston . The portrait, by Aaron Douglas, not only captures another side of Hurston but also a different style than the modern, geometric approach typically associated with Douglas.

Aaron Douglas (American, 1899–1979). Miss Zora Neale Hurston , 1926. Pastel on canvas. Fisk University Galleries, Nashville

MILLER: We have Hurston sitting in a chair and there’s a certain kind of dark brownness to the wood. So I’m really interested in the many many tones of brown that are in the painting. She’s wearing a brown kind of cloche hat, she’s got a little fur, and her coat is brown. So, it’s a sort of study in brown, which I think is really beautiful because it’s bringing out her skin tone.

What I also really like about this painting is the expression on Hurston’s face. She seems like she is relaxed and thinking and in the company of a friend. We think of Hurston as a person who has a lot of energy. Like, she just had tremendous energy. And this portrait is one of her where she’s calm, relaxed, and at ease.

LYNNE: It’s a refined, quiet portrait—a far cry from Hurston the pistol-totin’, Sassy Susie–driving, anthropological researcher….

During this time Langston Hughes was also down South.

MILLER: So Hurston was down in the South doing field work, collecting stories and folk songs. Trying to sort of study African American culture in a way that it hadn’t really ever been studied before and preserve it. And Langston Hughes was visiting Tuskegee Institute and giving a reading of his poetry. And they kind of got on the road together.

And the way that Hurston was traveling is that she was not traveling to universities. She was traveling to, you know, work camps, work sites, small Black communities where she could listen to stories and talk to ordinary Black people about their lives, you know, record their speech, their metaphors. I mean, all of the things that she called the characteristics of Negro expression. So they were really sort of out in smaller communities and rural communities driving around in Hurston’s car.

LYNNE: These two writers and their lives embody how the writings of the Renaissance traveled. It wasn’t work that only found an audience in the cosmopolitan North. It spoke to and resonated with these rural communities in a way that’s not surprising.

MILLER: Hurston’s collecting stories. Hughes is reading his work and interacting with people. So, in terms of how some of the Harlem Renaissance poetry and literature was received in other places, it was embraced.

LYNNE: The writings of the Harlem Renaissance traveled far and wide and covered many themes. The essays, novels, short stories, poems, and plays created during this time spoke to audiences in Europe, the Caribbean, and beyond about life in the rural South as well as the industrialized cities of the North.

The writer Nella Larsen tackled topics like colorism in her classic novel Passing . Other writers, like Claude McKay or Countee Cullen, found inspiration in themes of sexuality, alienation, and racial pride. There are so many incredible writers from the Harlem Renaissance to research and enjoy. Their contributions radically changed and inspired the written word and we can see, feel, and read their influence in so many writers today.

KEENE: We get a deeper sense of Black experience, Black interiority, Black subjectivity in a way that we had not seen before. So, I think that the Harlem Renaissance writers really opened up a lot of doors, a lot of windows for their peers and for all the writers who follow. Because we’re still, in a sense, walking through the doors that they opened up for us.

[Zora Neale Hurston singing “Halimufack”]

LYNNE: You may have had the chance to read Zora Neale Hurston’s work as a writer and an author. But I wanted to share something that feels really special to me as a self-identified Hurston fangirl. Here’s her singing.

[Zora Neale Hurston continues singing]

LYNNE: There’s something about hearing her voice that makes me realize—oh wow. She was a human being, with her own emotions and lived experience and singing voice.

LYNNE: “Halimufack” performed by Zora Neale Hurston is available in the Library of Congress .

LYNNE: A big thank you to Monica L. Miller and John Keene for spending time with us today. Our next episode will focus on the music and nightlife of the Harlem Renaissance. We’ll talk about the musicians, the brilliant ballrooms, and smokey bars, and the freedom that people found in challenging conventional understandings of sexuality.

Harlem Is Everywhere  is produced by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios.

Our senior producer is Stephen Key. Our producer is Maria Robins-Somerville. Our editor is Josh Gwynn. Mixing by our senior engineer, Marina Paiz. Additional engineering by senior audio engineer Pedro Alvira. Our assistant engineers are Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks.

I’m your host, Jessica Lynne. Fact checking by Maggie Duffy. Legal services by Kristel Tupja. Original music by Austin Fisher and Epidemic Sound

The Met’s production staff includes producer Rachel Smith; managing producer Christopher Alessandrini; and executive producer Sarah Wambold.

This show would not be possible without Denise Murrell, the Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator at Large and curator for the Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism exhibition; research associate is Tiarra Brown.

Special thanks to Inka Drögemüller, Douglas Hegley, Skyla Choi, Isabella Garces, David Raymond, Ashley Sabb, Tess Solot-Kehl, Gretchen Scott, and Frank Mondragon.

Asha Saluja and Je-Anne Berry are the executive producers at Pineapple Street.

More from Harlem Is Everywhere

Harlem Is Everywhere : Episode 5, Art as Activism

Harlem Is Everywhere : Episode 4, Music & Nightlife

Harlem Is Everywhere : Episode 2, Portraiture & Fashion

About the contributors, jessica lynne.

Host, Harlem Is Everywhere

Monica L. Miller

Professor of English and Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

Harlem Is Everywhere

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Senior Grace McMillan grew up in western New York state in an all-woman intergenerational home. In the 1980s, her grandmother and mother defected from the USSR and came to the United States as refugees. They were the only Ukrainian family in their semi-rural town. 

“My mom would tell me stories about how tough things were when she was growing up,” McMillan says. “I learned from her that my life is in my own hands, and I can do anything if I just put my mind to it.” 

As she began thinking about her future, she developed an interest in space through movies. Soon, she was intently reviewing the academic prerequisites to becoming an astronaut on the NASA website. “I knew I needed a bachelor of science. I told myself I was going to MIT,” she says. 

McMillan was accepted Early Decision with a full-ride scholarship through QuestBridge, a platform that matches high-achieving, low-income high school students with top colleges and universities. 

She was ecstatic to enroll at MIT, but adjusting to urban life in Boston as a first-year was still a big change. “It was vertigo. The buildings were so tall, and the streets were so busy.” Simultaneously, her autoimmune disease flared, and she was hospitalized several times that spring. “[MIT Health] staff are wonderful and always really listened, and sent me to the right specialists,” she says. 

Though she eventually found a treatment, McMillan stayed committed to prioritizing her health while also excelling academically. Now, she helps make on-campus health care more accessible in her role as a student representative on the MIT Health Consumers’ Advisory Council . 

Combining humanities and engineering

Ultimately, McMillan’s interests shifted away from space exploration. But that doesn’t mean she stopped aiming for the stars. 

She chose Course 21E (Humanities and Engineering), an ambitious joint degree program offered through the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences .

“I had learned to love reading so much that I knew even before coming to MIT that I would study the humanities,” McMillan says. “Writing, however, doesn’t come naturally to me.” She challenged herself to take writing-intensive literature courses to master the written word and gain confidence in her communication skills. 

Her humanities coursework has included Russian language — McMillan wanted to connect with the language she heard spoken at home but never formally studied. She took five courses with Maria Khotimsky , a senior lecturer who developed the MIT Russian curriculum. “She has gone above and beyond to help me in every way: academic support, career support, just listening to me, and even making her classes breakfast. Her courses pushed me to be a better Russian language speaker.” 

It was Khotimsky who encouraged her to attend a Russian language immersion program in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where she lived with a local family for eight weeks over summer 2022. While studying there, McMillan was reminded of the simplicity of her childhood in upstate New York. “Living in a city like Boston, where you need a phone or the internet to do anything, it's easy to forget that sometimes a simple solution is better than a highly technological one.” 

“Engineers need communication skills”

She brought this global perspective back to MIT and applied it to a team-based capstone engineering project involving designing a software-free laser-powered cutting machine for artists. 

She explains, “The principle is that you draw on your material and our product will cut it out for you. It will use a built-in camera and program to guide a laser without requiring access to a computer.” 

McMillan says her humanities courses helped her to work better on a team. “Engineers need communication skills. You can be the smartest person in the room, but no one will care if you can’t convey your ideas effectively.” 

As a junior, McMillan pledged to the Sigma Kappa sorority after reflecting on how too much of her Covid-era life had been, by necessity, spent behind a computer and not with other humans. She considers moving into the group’s house one of her best college decisions. “I found a community of like-minded women who are invested in helping each other succeed, both academically and in our personal lives,” she says. 

When McMillan isn’t in class or hanging out with her sisters, she’s in the library studying for the Law School Admission Test. She is determined to use her legal education to focus on education policy reform. “As a kid, I had mentors and teachers who advocated for me in ways I could never have imagined. I want to be able to pay it forward and help every student get that kind of access, too,” she says.

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Teaching and learning artificial intelligence: Insights from the literature

• Published: 02 May 2024

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• Bahar Memarian   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0671-3127 1 &
• Tenzin Doleck 1  

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for nearly a century, yet in recent years the rapid advancement and public access to AI applications and algorithms have led to increased attention to the role of AI in higher education. An equally important but overlooked topic is the study of AI teaching and learning in higher education. We wish to examine the overview of the study, pedagogical outcomes, challenges, and limitations through a systematic review process amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and public access to ChatGPT. Twelve articles from 2020 to 2023 focused on AI pedagogy are explored in this systematic literature review. We find in-depth analysis and comparison of work post-COVID and AI teaching and learning era is needed to have a more focused lens on the current state of AI pedagogy. Findings reveal that the use of self-reported surveys in a pre-and post-design form is most prevalent in the reviewed studies. A diverse set of constructs are used to conceptualize AI literacy and their associated metrics and scales of measure are defined based on the work of specific authors rather than a universally accepted framework. There remains work and consensus on what learning objectives, levels of thinking skills, and associated activities lead to the advanced development of AI literacy. An overview of the studies, pedagogical outcomes, and challenges are provided. Further implications of the studies are also shared. The contribution of this work is to open discussions on the overlooked topic of AI teaching and learning in higher education.

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Bahar Memarian & Tenzin Doleck

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Memarian, B., Doleck, T. Teaching and learning artificial intelligence: Insights from the literature. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12679-y

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Received : 03 August 2023

Accepted : 10 April 2024

Published : 02 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12679-y

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