Give young children a crayon or a xylophone for the first time, then watch. Note the shocked, awed expression on their faces, the careful hesitation and wonder. This gives way very quickly to a tentative line or note; followed by frenzied, gleeful scribbling, colour covering paper, tablecloth, walls, books, anything within arm's reach, or manic key-banging, producing a barrage of notes like a downpour of glass beads.
That first encounter with an artistic medium is like magic: colour and form conjured from nowhere, sounds that transform the atmosphere, sensation and movement, that release joy. And it is universal. "We all have an artistic intelligence," explains Martin Drury, founder and former director of The Ark, the children's cultural centre in Temple Bar, Dublin.
"Children's play is their work," says Drury. "Children \up to 14\are in a huge period of learning and development, a period in which they learn to be human beings. The arts must offer the opportunity to do that making and developing." Currently, he says, "we are dismally failing" to provide the means, materials, opportunities and atmosphere to make the arts available and accessible to children. He argues that lack of sufficient funds exacerbates a general deficit of provision for children's arts in Ireland. Until now, art for children only existed thanks to the exhaustive efforts made by a few dedicated individuals.
Following his years of experience as education officer with the Arts Council, Drury set out to create in The Ark a "living arts centre", with a changing programme "to make a balance between being a looker and a maker and a doer. Even when children are spectators, they must have implied participation and quality of access," he says.
Since The Ark opened its doors in 1995, it has invited children to join in a multitude of artistic activities - theatre, music, visual arts, dance and hybrids thereof - as both spectators and participants. That policy will continue, kicking off this year's school-year programme with the Children's Season of the Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival (starting this week), offering dance and theatre productions geared to stimulate their imaginations.
Newly-appointed Ark director Eric Fraad is keen to continue this tradition. Coming from New York, where he had directed local arts organisations and been active in creating programmes for young people, his experience with experimental and multi-media theatre would seem to suit children's tastes.
"We are dedicated to innovation and excellent, challenging engagement in art and culture for all the children of Ireland," Fraad says. He also hopes to bring his recent experience with technology as "a new creative tool" into The Ark.
"You have to deal with the world that kids deal with - music, video games, etc. We can use computers not as disseminators of information, but as a tool for inventing and exploring."
Helen O'Donoghue, head of education and community programmes at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), has recently been appointed by the Arts Council as arts representative on the advisory council of the National Children's Strategy. This was set up by the Department of Health and Children to help formulate Government policy affecting children. Since 1991, she has been working on programmes at IMMA geared to "initiate or light a fire, to light a spark in a family . IMMA is one place where children are made to feel welcome, where a child can explore and feel valued." On Sunday afternoons, young visitors can take a tour of the museum, during which they focus on a specific work; afterwards they go to a project room where an artist helps them to develop their experience and inspiration into artistic work of their own.
O'Donoghue encourages parents "not just to drop their kids off but to join them, meet the artists, see their kids' responses. From an early age, children express complex ideas through their art." Freed from the time-space constraints of (adult) logic, children, she says, fuse layers of experience, thought and emotion in a way words cannot express. "Things can tumble out in a drawing." Drama is another medium in which children allow their innermost selves to "tumble out", and the National Theatre does its bit to assist them with the Abbey's Outreach programme. Sharon Murphy, the programme's education director, feels strongly that "theatre is a mechanism whereby society reflects and understands itself. The qualities that children bring to the theatre - their curiosity, playfulness, their attraction to risks, their joy in discovery - we can all learn from them".
Currently, the Abbey Children's Workshop, a programme involving children with leading theatre practitioners, will be "playing the critic" during the Dublin Theatre Festival. One hundred children between the ages of eight and 12 have been invited to learn to develop critical responses to stage productions. In January, a play for very young children, Harold and Sophie, which was created out of an Outreach project, will be showcased in Dublin, after appearing in Milan.
This play also appeared at the Babor≤ International Arts Festival for Children in Galway last year. Since it split from the Galway Arts Festival five years ago, Babar≤ has continued its development as an independent event, says its director Lali Morris. Morris, whose education in Chicago emphasised both the teaching of art and using it as a tool to teach other things, feels a sense of obligation to her audiences.
"You feel responsible for what you expose them to. Children are so impressionable through the media; I want to show them something different." She travels all over the world and visits other festivals to look for that difference.
This year's Babor≤ festival, which begins on October 16th and continues until October 21st, offers a wide selection of interactive programmes and workshops - in theatre, music, visual arts, literature and dance - designed to engage children in a multitude of ways. "We must regard children as intelligent beings," says Morris. "We must give them quality as well. Things don't have to be panto-style. Kids appreciate beauty, silence, the small things. And there is beautiful work being created for children."
Paying for all this is a perennial problem. For the Babor≤ festival, Morris works constantly to find funding. "There's not enough money at all. You can't charge high prices for kids. Sometimes I get lucky and receive financial help from the country the companies come from," says Sharon Murphy.
"Children's arts aren't taken as seriously as adult arts," she says. There is an "underlying prejudice" that surrounds the distinction between arts for children and arts for adults, she says.
More official support is necessary to make the arts available to all children. "We need a huge, integrated plan," says Helen O'Donoghue. "The interest is there. I get numerous phone calls from parents, millions over the past 10 years. You need to be able to access things locally; the availability of private providers is patchy and you can't assess what they're doing. And there is no structure, as there is with the scouts or with sport." Even where opportunities exist, they must all be paid for privately, and are not cheap.
"Huge swathes of the population haven't the time, money or interest to put into their children's art education," says Martin Drury. "We're perpetuating the notion that arts belong to the educated class with disposable income." He says that "citizens who are economically unable to speak for themselves" have a right to the joys and benefits that the arts can provide. "There are kinds of experience, kinds of learning promoted by the arts that are not promoted by science, maths, history," he says. "The arts deal with that interesting bridge between ideas and feelings. They are one of the fundamental human languages, one of the building blocks that make humans human."
Babor≤ International Arts Festival for Children runs in Galway from October 16th-21st. Programmes, information and booking at 091-566 577/8 or see www.babaro.ie
The Children's Season at The Ark for the Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival begins today with Minuit produced by the Compagnie James Carles from France. Booking at: 01-6707788.
