VISUAL ARTS IN ZIMBABWE

Education of Art is often regarded as luxury and the discipline is relegated to the people who viewed as mad and a noble profession.
Art education is not a luxury but a necessity ,teaching children from a very young age to think critically and to use their hands in co-ordination with their brains.Teaching of art is more critical ,for developing artistic skills in growing children as they are being prepared for the very real possibility of taking art as a profession. Some artists become part of the informal sector benefit from an ability to make products based on their cultural backgrounds and their skillful hands.
Since independence 30 years ago Zimbabwe 's art education was delineated along lines of talented artists. Art was taken as a profession of the very few and the rest of schools only allowed to teach craft in conformity to general educational policies. which geared for producing semi-skilled labour. Although the education systems improved to some extent in the education of the majority since independence. Art education is still maginalised up to today. The ministry of education sports ,arts and culture is not yet developed a tertiary visual arts syllabus to cater for pupils to further their own artistic skills.
The main goal of tertiary visual arts is to develop aesthetic literacy of the adult . Prior to making art the child should understand what is art and its various functions. Hence this embraces the knowledge and understanding of art and aesthetics in the development of critical faculties which foster analysis of the art of individual and others.Art form that gives primacy to an idea over craftmanship.
French artist and theorist Marcel Duchamp(1887-1968) the ideas of conceptual art,emphasising the elimination of objects as marketable products.The likes of Tashinga Gondo are the other skilled visual artists Zimbabwe is proud of by making art products on the international markets. There are prominant Zimbabwean artist who proved beyond any reasonable doubt that we need to formalise art education in Zimbabwe from primary school,secondary up to tertiary level. The likes Tapfuma Gutsa, Nicholas Mukombaranwa ,Dominic Benhura , Egnes Nyanhungo and the list is too large to mention.
The other elite group which comprise of Celia Winter -Irving ,Tom Blomefield ,Dr Frank Mckwen ,Father Groeber ,Edward Canon Patterson and so on, are the pioneers who shade light to the art education as of prime necessity in any state and Zimbabwe in particular for its cultural beliefs and activities.
These days we have more sophisticated understanding of the world around us ,than the last 50 years or so where world was not yet developed in information technology. Visual literacy ,stimuli and exposure to media based technology bring about artistic expression and response to the needs of visual art education framework.
The education policy should look forward not only to teach the history of own country ,but should put more emphasis on learning of arts and its cultural beliefs.
The only unique way of teaching arts and cultural aspects successfully, is through public education. This help to know our children better and shapern the other sector of economy which is art industry.
The ideal place to educate public is in the schools. This is because of children are ready there to learn and the geographically widespread of schools. Moreover teachers are the strategic agents of change within the wider sector of population. A curriculum that facilitates the stewardship of visual arts should be promoted.
It should therefore be the concern and the duty of the educational planners and curriculum designers to expend their energy on devising programmes to reach pupils and their teachers.
Teachers can inpired to instil an appreciation of visual arts and cultural activities in pupils through impowered with background information which will be useful to implement the art education.
A lack of general formal education made aspects of visual art teaching inappropriate for any prospective artists. However for variety of reasons which had nothing to do with any form of teaching art we easily to have visual artists.
There is always a link between informal and formal art education .From the onset the teachers and the children should show art as a means of making a living,thus establishing a relationship between art and the society. Teachers should be cautious when it comes to relate art and the society because of the potential danger of its economic rationale for making art and the influence of market forces which threatened by originality and personal vision which are the major aspects of good art.
The direction of early artists ,a genuine belief in spiritual beliefs for the systems of the real world as visualised in art become a tradition of those view the success of artistic sector in economic sense.
In this computer and internet age there are increasing employment opportunities for artist in particular fields of graphic desigh,web design and advertising industry. Art as a curricular subject is gaining its awareness of its importance in all civilised disciplines of communication technology.
The widely need of formal ,accredited art education is immernsely hindered by lack of teacher training , training facilities and art institutions with good formal training facility.
If Zimbabwe education sector fully need to develop artist all can start from priortising it in its education system and support those schools which can nurture