Louis Riel’s words (taken in Winnipeg at The Forks, May 24, 2022, Kimberly Barber)
Since reflecting last week on the relevance of the performing arts (and more specifically, music and singing) in today’s society, I’ve had many conversations and further thoughts. I also had the opportunity to interview two exceptional young people who are both candidates for our Laurier Scholars Award—a prestigious scholarship offered to one individual in each of 7 faculties at Laurier, which attracts the brightest young, socially conscious and community-oriented minds in a highly competitive application process—and consider them for this honour.
What struck me in these interviews was how thoughtful, open-minded and aware these Gen-Z folks are. Of course this is a very specific slice of humanity I’m interviewing, but I notice this trend more often than not (in contrast to the opinons of many older people who like to peg them as “snowflakes”, “woke” and worse) in this generation of students now entering post-secondary education. For so many of them, the environment and climate change are a worrisome preoccupation, to some degree obliterating all else, and their acceptance of the fluidity of gender and sexuality is open and obvious. Their lens is firmly focussed on social justice and they see the inherent inequity and unfairness in all we say and do, and they call it out. So many things that are a struggle for those of us who have been much longer on this planet are givens for them. They don’t see the same binaries that we do; they challenge our systems of categorization and ranking and come with strong ideas about work-life balance (they want it), subservience to authority (they don’t accept it) and blind obedience (they oppose it). It’s frustrating for many of us (myself included), but in the moments when I am able to release my ego’s strangle-hold on control of the situation, I begin to see the wisdom in it all, or at the very least, the hidden gifts at the centre.
Dedicated readers of this blog will note my tendency to link learning, teaching, history and current events, and draw conclusions (or at least theories) from them, so this one will likely not surprise anyone who knows a bit about the way my brain works. But what I’ve been pondering these last days is whether this growing ability among the young folks to imagine a world without barriers (“Universal Design”) means that the future lies in not focusing on specialization, uniqueness and difference, but rather, on intersection, collaboration and connection.
What if we design music programs so that students can experience and create communities full of innovation, creativity, exploration and critical thinking, using the power of music to connect people and places? What if a music degree is not for just elite performers (and then further down the traditional “hierarchical totem pole”, educators, music therapists and administrators)—and “classical” performers at that—but actually for anyone who wants a life with creativity at the centre, with music as the vehicle? What if singing, music, are ways in which we investigate life’s biggest questions? What if they are conduits to a more caring, compassionate and just society? What if, like Louis Riel portended, in reference to the Metis people, but here expanded to encompass all creatives, the people will sleep for 100 years (now more like 150, but who’s counting?), and it will be the artists who lead the way? Or in Riel’s words, “it will be the artists who give them their spirit back”. They knew something then, and maybe young people know it now.