Pre-Texts is a simple and scalable arts protocol that offers communities necessary skills for flourishing. These include literacy, creative/critical thinking, and citizenship. Each skillset drives the others in a holistic dynamic with a single prompt: “Make art from this text and reflect on the process.” Curiosity drives creativity which engages emotions and social communication; and communication stimulates curiosity. (See www.pre-texts.org) The approach will be familiar from some, often elite, practices today, but it revives an ancient spirit of education. In classical times, school meant leisure, literally. Skholé (σχολή) still names free time in modern Greek and us words like school, école, escuela, scuola, Schule, etc. Recovering this arts-based platform to democratize education will recognize that everyone is or can be an artist.
The Pre-Texts pedagogy distills millennial lessons for the range of artists to facilitate low-cost, high impact, education for all. During the sessions of training, participants propose and facilitate activities: dance, song, painting, costumes, storyboards, soundtracks, puppets, sketches, pantomime, sculpture, riddles, crossword-puzzles, cartoon strips, rap, murals, etc. 

The simple protocol:

1.   Read a target text aloud (something difficult or “boring” to demonstrate that art-making promotes ownership) while participants create book covers for the text. (This recovers a tradition of “lectores” in tobacco factories and adds the newer Cartonera book publishers who recycle cardboard, and words.)

2.   Each participant asks the text a question. Texts are objects of scrutiny, not people. They discover that curiosity, rather than confidence, sustains learning. The inevitable variety of questions demonstrates that reading is necessarily interpretive and that differences are contributions to understanding rather than obstacles.

3.   Facilitators take turns to propose an art activity. Practically any text can be interpreted through a chosen art form. Rotating the facilitation levels hierarchies.

4.   Art-making closes with a brief session to reflect on “What did we do?” Rather than ask the conventional “What did we learn?” -- which generates rote, mute, and even hostile responses -- our question animates participation.

5.   “Go off on a tangent” repeats from one session to the next. Rather than dissuade participants from exploring even far-fetched connections to a shared text, we encourage free and broad reading to select a contribution to post. Posting the variety of “tangents” anonymously and sampling them as a first activity of the following session, iterates and anticipates the intellectual and the social value of interpersonal differences.

The uncluttered elegance of Pre-Texts makes it agile, efficient. Any text will do, and so will any art form. Participants can dance a chemistry lesson as well as a narrative conflict. They can photograph plants or buildings and reflect on the effects of perspective, which will help to explore history texts. Learning by making art promotes ownership of lessons through the pleasures of discovery.
Pre-Texts integrates easily into schools and cultural centers. A Professional Development Program, participants can be certified after training and 15 hours of implementation.


*Full attendance at training sessions and implementation is required for certification.