A Vision: Every School into Creative Studio Zones
#CreativeFreedomAct #CultureShiftAct #CreativeSocietyAct
A Vision: Every School into Creative Studio Zones
Reimagining Education as a Living Arts Practice
Imagine a world where every public school is not just a place of instruction - but a space of creation.
Where the desks are replaced by worktables, open floors, rehearsal halls, and garden stages.
Where students don’t just learn about history - they embody it through theatre.
Don’t just study language - they live it through storytelling and song.
Don’t just calculate abstract numbers - they map them with movement, color, and form.
This is the vision of Creative Zones in Public Schools - an initiative to reimagine education as an arts-based environment of learning, where every subject is taught through the mediums of expression:
The Nine Foundational Arts of the Creative Zone School
Visual Art
Drawing, painting, sculpture, design, collage, textiles. Learning to see, to compose, to make meaning through form, color, texture, and spatial awareness.Music & Sound
Singing, rhythm, instrument play, composing, listening. Learning through tone, pattern, vibration, and the mathematics of feeling.Dance & Movement
Gesture, improvisation, body awareness, somatic literacy. Learning through kinesthetic intelligence, spatial play, and internal rhythm.Theatre & Role Play
Enactment, character, dialogue, improvisation. Learning by embodying relationships, historical figures, and social dynamics.Poetry & Language Arts
Story, metaphor, oral tradition, reading and writing as creative acts. Learning the power of voice, of naming, of transforming perception through word.Storytelling & Myth
Personal narrative, ancestral tales, collective memory. Learning by placing oneself in the continuum of time, place, and meaning.Gardening & Earthwork
Soil, planting, tending, harvesting. Learning through seasonality, care, growth cycles, and partnership with nature.Cooking & Nourishment
Food preparation, flavor, balance, nutrition. Learning through transformation, intuition, cultural memory, and well-being.Craft & Making
Handwork, building, weaving, carpentry, tool use. Learning through tactile intelligence, process, material fluency, and applied invention.
Other Honorable Mentions (Optional Modules or Extensions)
Civic Dialogue: The art of conversation, listening, facilitation, and collaboration in community
Meditation & Inner Work: The art of stillness, presence, breathing, and reflection
Design & Systems Thinking: The art of interconnection, flow, structure, and function
Digital Media: The art of modern storytelling, media literacy, and conscious creation
What Does This Look Like?
A kindergarten classroom where students learn letters by dancing them with their bodies, painting them with texture and gesture, composing songs for each vowel.
A middle school science class where ecosystems are studied by composing operas of interdependence - singing the relationships between sun, soil, plant, and pollinator.
A high school history unit where students stage a forum between historical figures, exploring competing worldviews through dialogue, costume, and ethical improvisation.
A math class where geometry is explored through the mandala, symmetry through origami, ratios through rhythm, and fractals through collage.
Why It Matters
Because children are born artists.
They think in metaphor.
They move to know.
They draw to understand.
They invent language just to feel the shape of it in the mouth.
And yet, the current system trains them out of it - prioritizing abstraction, obedience, and sameness.
It’s time to rearrange the equation.
The arts are not enrichment. They are the root system of cognition.
Neuroscience tells us what poets already know:
The body is the first classroom.
The imagination is the first tool.
The arts are how we make sense of the world.
What Would It Take?
A shift in teacher training, valuing artists as educators and educators as artists
An investment in materials, spaces, and residencies - but no more than we already spend on testing infrastructure
A new standard of assessment that values process, presence, collaboration, and insight over rote outcomes
And most importantly: a cultural consensus that creativity is not optional. It is the living engine of intelligence, empathy, and human growth.
From the School to the World
This vision doesn’t end at graduation.
It’s a foundation for a society where imagination is not treated as luxury, but as a public utility.
Where adults continue to learn, invent, and express in their workplaces and communities.
Where future citizens are not just compliant, but curious, collaborative, and courageous.
This is not fantasy. It is already happening - in fragments, in pilot programs, in the corners of classrooms where brave teachers sneak poetry into science.
The task now is to amplify it. To connect the dots. To declare that every school can be a creative zone, not just for a lucky few, but for all.
Let’s raise a generation who remembers what it is to be alive, expressive, and awake to the world.
Start with the children. Start with the arts.
Myself, I am a studio artist and a citizen. My job and my duty is to start the conversation and seed the imagination. It is up to others in the right places to nurture it into a reality. We all have a part to play. What’s your part? Do it.
Hashtags to use: #CreativeFreedomAct #CultureShiftAct #CreativeSocietyAct
web address: https://www.touchonian.com/s/creative-freedom-act
The question is, how do schools compete with popular sports programs like football, soccer, for funding. I have seen sports programs override funding for music and arts programs many times because it is more profitable. Not being a naysayer here, I've just seen it happen a lot with schools here in California. It seems to me that the arts based education would need to be proven through a trial demonstration showing the value of the arts as a superior learning methodology, starting with special needs students, where the results would be the most visible, or convincing a charter school to try it out, or maybe talk some schools into having what you would call advanced classes as after school programs (just brainstorming out loud with my fingers, here). And most parents would love to say their children were getting into advanced classes. That would almost be as attractive as the sports programs, and of course they would only be advanced in terms of methodology and open to any children who wanted to be in the program.
Most school administrators tend to be mired in the financial and legal norms at traditional schools until they can somehow be convinced otherwise, so those considerations need to be dealt with as well. I think breaking the ice might be the hardest part. It would actually be really wonderful to see this kind of education applied, and since most educators are left leaning, there might be some interest, especially with the current administration fiasco at the white house.