Interview With Rob Jaffe Director of the California State Summer School for the Arts or Inner Spark.

I spoke with Rob Jaffe at length about digital media arts. Where and how it should be taught. The relationship he has to industry and the amazing track record CSSSA has in getting students into careers. I also wanted to know more about what is a model digital media arts curriculum. In a way CSSSA is a kind of barometer of how good the schools are (or aren't).

(P) Thanks for sitting down and talking with me.

(RJ) My pleasure.

(P) For those who may not know about CSSSA can you tell me a little about it?

(RJ) Well you know it well. What we do is run an intensive summer school for all the arts including digital media art usually at Cal Arts Institute for about four weeks. We attract over 500 students, mostly from California. They can be just entering high school or just graduated.

(P) What's the goal?

(RJ) That's a little hard to say because we want the kids to learn what life is like for a professional artist. It is a taste of professional preparation, but it is only four weeks. At the same time, this is so different from regular school the kids learn all kinds of things. For one thing, a lot of our kids are not the "normal" kid you might find at a high school. Many of them don't do well in a traditional environment. They come to Inner Spark and they explode. It can be transformational. No school will be able to duplicate what we do. For one thing all of the students are other kids just like themselves, the teachers here are professional artists as well as educators, they are interested in lighting a fire of creativity in the kid. I mean all of the kids here have had creative experiences, they have to because we can only take less than 25% who apply and so the audition is really important. The portfolio is already established in a way. I guess you can say they come here to get professional grade focus. For many kids once they get hooked on using their creative skills and they get encouragement for doing new and innovative things they really see themselves in a new way.

We don't do the traditional thing like work on a performance. They work on their own work. They do acting but they are learning the basic idea of acting rather than doing a performance per se. The other thing here, you see kids cross-pollinate in a way they can't or won't in high school. They also learn that the arts take discipline and commitment. They get caught up in doing things and they can work 12-hour days.

(P) You get to see kids from a lot of schools. Are there any schools you would say have exemplary digital media arts curriculum?

(RJ) I will give you a printout of where our kids come from. But there isn't one place that really does a great job in terms of a complete model curriculum because of the restraints that face teachers in high schools. Sawn Sullivan does a great job at Sheldon High School in animation. He has a great sequence there. There is a good program in Hamilton in LA. I could mention a few Charter Schools. We get some kids here, but we also get a significant portion of students who have little or nothing to do with the school. They may find a teacher who can serve as a mentor but it is hard because these kids need to learn how to develop creativity, and let's face it, schools don't do that really well. Creativity is not a core subject.

I think the places that tend to send us the best-prepared kids come from community projects like the SF Film Workshop. That's more like the kind of thing kids get here.

One common thread though is kids know how to use digital media as a tool well even if the product is not sophisticated. There is a phrase kids use here," Anybody can make a slick product, but not everyone can make art.".

(P) Yeah, is question is: Is the computer doing the work?

(RJ) Exactly. There are programs that are great at manipulating shape and color. You have to remember that in the industry it is not about technology or software it is about artistic principles and creativity. We have a good track record of placing kids at places like Pixar, and at Pixar they don't use software, they write code to make the art depending on what the artist needs. They have a University at Pixar that takes care of "training" but the real litmus test to get there in the first place is can the student use their imagination, can they conceive of the art, can they design and draw. The technology can be taught. Let's face it; the industry standard is that there is no standard, the technology changes all the time.

(P) Randy Nelson the director of Pixar University told me that they have not hired a CSU or UC graduate in the last five years but they have something like 22 CSSSA kids.

(RJ) Which says a lot about the kids we attract. I think in that respect we do a good job. But of the student doesn't come to Inner Spark on-fire already we aren't going to prepare them for a career in four weeks.

(P) What do you think a good digital curriculum might look like at a high school?

(RJ) I think it starts with arts education. I know John Hughes at Rhythm and Hues the animation studio says there is no substitute for visual art education. Drawing, shaping, learning how to express yourself in various media. The kids should be getting those basic skills in elementary school, which for the most part they are not getting.

Then I think they should start with simple forms like digital photography. They should learn what it means to work digitally. That isn't hard to get done because every school can afford that. Then they should learn how to tell the story well. So they need to practice that a lot. They need to understand sequence and narrative causation. The students should be learning about storyboards and scripts. They need to be able to make mistakes and learn how to make changes, have a sense of what elements are in a good story. They can get some of this in literature. Then they also can graduate to more sophisticated digital media. But there are all sorts of barriers.

(P) Such as?

(RJ) Well often the teacher who is teaching the class doesn't really have training in the art-form. They may know how to shoot footage and generally know cameras but are not trained in arts standards. What happens there is a lot of product gets done but not very well done. In most cases the students are more familiar with and comfortable with the cameras, lights and computer programs.

Then the schools make mistakes in what they invest in, many times the equipment is old school before it gets up and running. That's a problem. That's why community programs can do certain things. They are nimble. They can buy equipment or get it donated without having to go through cumbersome procedures. Then too, most schools can't rent or lease equipment. At CSSSA one of the advantages is we are not bound up in using equipment that we don't really want to use because it is there. Our kids get exposed to cutting edge stuff; some of it is being beta-tested for the first time ever.

Then the teachers get unmotivated students "dumped" on them. One of the most disheartening things for teachers and students is that these classes are often dumping grounds for any kid who can't hack academics. But the student may not want to be there. The teachers are strapped because the schools can't or won't invest in up to date training or professional development.

(P) So what you are saying is we aren't where we need to be.

(RJ) Not in my opinion.

(P) What have you learned from your experience at CSSSA that may be applicable to a comprehensive high school program?

(RJ) Well we work with a professor at Santa Cruz named Larry Harrington who is doing this extraordinary tracking of creativity, what is it, what do students thing it is, what do all creative artists have in common in the most comprehensive study I know about.

His findings to date are not surprising in so many ways but it is good to have longitudinal data to back up our ideas about the importance of creativity. Harrington ranked factors students found to be highly motivating to engage in artistic behavior. The following were the top six:

Because it gives me a chance to use my imagination 57%

I enjoy seeing how my work looks or sounds when it is done 47%

I enjoy making something "real" from an idea that began in my imagination 46%

It gives me a great sense of freedom 45%

I like the effect the finished product has on other people 44%

It's going to help with my future education or career 40%

The point is this data gives us insight into how kids feel about doing art and what motivates them. I doubt that artists are different than most people, they have better skills and deeper urges but I think the data would hold true for other students. What that means to me is that the arts can be a powerful way to connect students to learning. The digital arts in particular.

I would hope that the educational leadership would develop classes in this area so that many students who are not presently connected to school can re-connect. Plus as you can see, the students also believe that it can impact their future careers. I doubt that other subjects would rank this high in motivations both personal and practical.

(PM) Okay Rob, what can County Superintendents do to help?

(RJ) Well I am certainly not an expert but I think they can be leaders in validating the importance of the arts. Certainly no one would argue that in this day and age when everything in the society is digital from advertising to all kinds of knowledge that digital media arts are an important tool. The skills students learn here can be applied to all kinds of careers not just artistic ones. So the county superintendent can exert leadership, they can do teacher training, they can help work with businesses and industries, they could set up special small learning communities within schools, they could help charter schools. That's off the top of my head.

(PM) Do you have any anecdotes about successful kids?

(RJ) (Laughing) You mean like Katherine McPhee of American Idol who was one of our kids. Her mom and sister are also involved. That's a loaded question. Sure, we do a pretty good job of tracking students. I would point to a couple of geniuses who say that the CSSSA experience helped them in future careers.

We have a section on our website you can visit called "students and alumni." I will single out three people, James Franco, actor, Aron Campisano high tech mogul and Donald Livingston businessman,

What they all have in common is that they say the training the Summer School gave them the creative training that later proved to be a key element in giving them the validation to do creative things. Prior to the summer school they all felt uneasy with school. Franco, say he couldn't relate to being a student but the Summer school opened his eyes and changed his personality. Now Campisano and Livingston own their own very successful companies in high technology. The point I want to make is that creative training is vitally important to students in this digital age. You never know where that creativity will take you. We don't expect every student to become a professional artist like James Franco but we know that the experience at Inner Spark is a catalyst for all who attend.

(PM) Is the Inner Spark Program replicable?

(RJ) Not in its entirety. You have special set of circumstances here, like working 50 hours per week on art and being taught by artists of extreme quality that a normal school could not afford. But some lessons learned here can be extracted and replicated, such as, stimulating students to take on risky assignments that are difficult, show students that discipline and practice pay off, and that they ought to find something in school to help them stay connected personally. I can't emphasize enough that many of our kids were in danger of dropping out because school does not stimulate them. That should never happen.

(PM) Thanks Rob

(RJ) Okay, thank you.