The ‘Arts in Education’ Exhibition and Concert
The American School of Bangkok in partnership with Yamaha Musical Instruments and Yamaha Music School are producing Thailand’s first “Arts in Education Exhibition and Concert” on April 21-22 at the Yamaha Music Hall in the prestigious Dr Thaworn Phornprapha Auditorium. The event’s premise is to show that studying the arts helps increase academic achievements in a fun filled ‘edutainment’ atmosphere the whole family will enjoy.
In addition to the concert there will be an exhibition showing many interactive science, mindfulness, educational and art displays as well as some of the latest medical and scientific proof to help people understand the new discoveries about the value of studying the arts has on academic achievements and young developing minds.
A portion of the proceeds from the event will be donated to Father Joe’s Mercy Centre which is a charitable organisation that has transformed the lives of over 50,000 Thai children The American School of Bangkok in partnership with Yamaha Musical Instruments and Yamaha Music School are producing Thailand’s first “Arts in Education Exhibition and Concert” on April 21-22 at the Yamaha Music Hall in the prestigious Dr Thaworn Phornprapha Auditorium. The event’s premise is to show that studying the arts helps increase academic achievements in a fun filled ‘edutainment’ atmosphere the whole family will enjoy.
in need. The Mercy Centre has five orphanages, a hospice, a home for mothers and children with HIV/AIDS, a 400 pupil kindergarten, a community meeting place and a serene haven that includes a playground and garden in the heart of Klong Toey’s poorest and most needy area. Through our charitable donation we hope to be able to raise up to one million baht plus funding a year long programme aiming to increase English proficiency for approximately one thousand students through the Mercy Centre’s school and outreach programmes.
The event will be in two parts, an exhibition featuring interactive art, science, mindfulness, educational and sports displays followed by a concert featuring ASB students and Yamaha artists. Show times will be at 2pm and 5pm and families are encouraged to arrive early to participate with the many displays at the exhibition as well as in the “science scavenger hunt”.
There will be illusionary art, 3D art, optical illusions and explanations of why our brains see and interpret these images as they do and how our eyes can play tricks on us. In the science displays there will be many fun and interactive exhibits that have a “Wow, that’s cool” factor that can be created at home such as being able to bend water and shape matter into patterns with sound waves and simple static electricity.
How to make things move without touching them using magnets and again static electricity. By showing our students models of human’s DNA double helix we will explain how if we uncoiled the average adults DNA strands there would be approximately 67 billion miles of our genetic codes, enough to circle the entire galaxy twice! How we share 80% of the same DNA as a cow, 61% the same as a fruit fly and 50% the same as banana… yes you are part of all of these other living things and they are part of you.
There will be many exciting and interactive displays such as these to help further excite students about learning science from the seen to the unseen. We will have our robotics department showing some of its latest creations that have our students designing, building and programming some quite complex assignments which of course will be some of the most sought after skills for students to have and learn about.
Jack Ma of Alibaba just stated at the World Economic Forum this year that by the year 2030 robots will take away over 800 million jobs from humans as the robots can simply perform the task better and we need to fundamentally address this in our education systems to prepare the upcoming graduates to be able to work in a world where robots are doing more and more jobs that humans once used to do.
The field of robotics is growing exponentially and luckily for our students Thailand is becoming one of the forefront countries in Asia developing in this area. In the mindfulness areas we will be able to show real time neural activity of participants brains when concentrating on different subjects and how in sports mindfulness, which is referred to as “getting in the zone”, help increase proficiency in the tasks at hand.
In mathematics and sports we will show the complex formulas that are performed behind the scenes in athletes minds such as the many factors that must be solved in something as simple as shooting a free throw in basketball and how playing sports increases teamwork which of course helps in almost every business situation later in life. We will also show how using mindfulness can be beneficial in keeping a healthy mind in today’s world of nonstop bombardment of information due to the explosion of social media as most studies show that we are normally exposed to between 5,000 -10,000 ads per day, up from about 500 thirty years ago.
Our brains simply need a break and the skills one learns through mindfulness can greatly help in this area, as well as creating more empathetic and compassionate well rounded humans beings. We will display some of the latest medical and scientific research showing how studying the arts, especially music, increases brain structure and neural activity which can help increase academic achievement and yields the best result in young developing minds.
For example it has been proven time and time again that studying music helps people increase their ability to learn a second language, can help with cognition and math skills along with many other areas of brain development. In fact it is a well known fact Einstein used to play his violin or piano when stuck on a math problem.
By concentrating on the problem at hand which uses more of the left brain functions and concentrate on the music which uses more right brain functions, he was able to strengthen the communications between his two hemisphere’s and increase his neural activity and overall brainpower. One 2012 study showed that by listening to music during a math test students improved their performance by up to 40%. By studying music students also learn patience which helps with increased ability to concentrate better and for longer periods of time, such as in doing schoolwork and any difficult task.
A study published in the respected journal “Nature” showed that first grade students studying music’s rhythms, pitches and other elements scored significantly better than other students as it was proven that there was a much greater development in ‘spatial temporal reasoning” and “language analytical reasoning”. Some have named this “The Mozart Effect”.
The students and children will be given a “science scavenger hunt” card that must be completed by interacting with all the displays and by doing so will receive a special gift bag at the end of the event. Teaching children, without them even realising, the importance of completing task and assignments to receive a special reward in addition to stimulating their young minds in ways that may not happen sitting only in a classroom learning from a book.
Interactive experiential learning is a new method being used today in the most progressive schools and equips the students with the most needed skills for the future such as creative thinking, problem solving, use of imagination as well as team work.
The concert itself will be a high impact exciting event on its own, filled with musical skits, orchestral music, singing, dancing, a fun filled segment named “The Masked Teacher” which will be a talent contest showing our teachers secret talents, as well as some of Yamaha’s most talented virtuoso performers all in a professional presentation created and produced by the ASB staff members and students.
This will not be your typical school musical and ensures to leave the audience wanting more as well as showing how many different departments and disciplines need to be at their best and all come together as a whole to make the best show possible. Again there is an underlying lesson here as in any successful business the same factors must take place. Please come and enjoy a few hours of family fun that is sure to please a wide range of interest and ages.
For more information or to participate as a sponsor please contact: Matthew Della Polla at [email protected].
