Facts

Did you know?:

• Youth theatre provides an informal and supportive context for personal and social development
• Youth theatre develops young people’s ability to be agents in their own development
• Youth theatre provides opportunities to explore self and experiment with personal identity in a supportive setting
• Youth theatre provides opportunities to take responsibility in work-like contexts and develop a range of pre-vocational skills

Playing a Part National Association of Youth Theatres, Centre for Applied Research and Arts Council of England. 

Recent research demonstrates that:

• The arts teach kids to be more tolerant and open
• The arts allow kids to express themselves creatively
• The arts promote individuality, bolster self confidence, and improve over all academic performance
• The arts can help troubled youth, providing an improved attitude towards school

Read the facts on how arts education helps kids do better

Five general lessons the arts teach children

• To make good judgments about qualitative relationships
• That problems can have more than one solution
• To celebrate multiple perspectives
• That small differences can have large effects
• That the arts offer experience we can have from no other source

From Learning and the Arts: Crossing Boundaries, 2000, article Ten Lessons the Arts Teach, Elliot Eisner, Professor of Education, Stanford University.

Six extra benefits children get from playing music:

1. Playing music increases memory and reasoning capacity, time management skills and eloquence
2. Playing music improves concentration, memory and self expression
3. Playing music improves the ability to think
4. Music training improves verbal memory
5. Learning music helps under performing students to improve
6. Music students are more likely to be good citizens

For more information about this research go to the Australian Music Association web site.