Why Experiential
Arts & Learning?
From the oldest known musical flute dating back over 50,000 years, to 60,000-year-old cave paintings, to decorative jewelry crafted more than 115,000 years ago, art has been utilized to connect, reflect, and relate human experiences for a very, very, very long time.
Artmaking has always been experiential.
The Neanderthal “Divje Babe” bone flute, discovered in Slovenia in 1995, estimated at 50,000-60,000 years old.
This isn’t the story we’ve been told (and sold) however. Ushered in by “high art” ideals of the European Renaissance some 500 years ago, along with Europe’s scientific, industrial, and colonial revolutions to follow, “The Arts” as we understand them in westernized societies today, have been heavily cast(e) in scientific terms of systems, subjects, categories, theories, methods, instruments, and more.
The Altamira cave paintings, discovered in Spain in 1868, estimated at 36,000 years old.
Mankind’s reception to this metaphorical “Science Channel” of artmaking has no doubt produced remarkable artists, artworks, and arts-inspired sociocultural movements over this period of time, some of which have changed the world in significant and transformative ways.
Counterintuitively and often inadvertently however, these scientific, technological, and intellectual pursuits have also fragmented artmaking (and mankind) in the process, evidenced no better than the oncoming age of Artificial Intelligence.
Aiming to reunite what has been fragmented, restore balance, and dissolve divisions in the arts experiences, Experiential Arts and Learning (EA&L) reintegrates the “Soul” of artmaking within the wealth of “Science” and technology already present in arts and arts education systems today, in an effort to renew the ancient, universal, and experiential “Spirit” of artmaking, which for hundreds of thousands of years, has served to connect, reflect, and relate us all.
Why
New Orleans?
Artmaking in New Orleans has served to connect disparate communities, reflect diverse cultures, and relate both individual and collective experiences for over 300 years, with evidence of indigenous artmaking in the area dating back over 1,500 years.
Remnants of Bamboula drums and dancing still echo through time from Congo Square. Second lines and Jazz funerals still wind whimsically through the one-way streets of the Treme neighborhood. Black Masking Indians still rise at dawn every Mardi Gras morning to show off their stunning beadwork. Generations of Creole families still seduce the senses with their remarkable mixture of European and Caribbean cultural traditions.
Indigenous Americans, Africans, Haitians, Cubans, Irish, Chinese, Germans, Mexicans, Italians, Vietnamese. The Spanish architecture of a French Quarter that only became “American” less than 250 years ago. Layer after layer of human history is expressed through art and artmaking.
New Orleans is indeed a gumbo of human experiences, where music is medicine, food is a love language, and humanity is reflected so compellingly through the city’s illustrious parades, festivals, architecture, neighborhoods, street names, and so much more. No other city in the U.S. epitomizes Experiential Arts as much as New Orleans.
Why
NO FEAR?
NO FEAR’s mission to create “art for heart’s sake” is more than a motto. It is an active and integrative approach that aims to renew balance between the “Science” and “Soul” of artmaking, by explicitly placing meaning and purpose at the heart of arts and arts education experiences.
We invite you to participate in this process and join NO FEAR’s growing community of partners, as we work together to cultivate the transformative power of Experiential Arts and Learning, and the meaningful and purposeful objectives it can serve.