Kachuyevski ’21 Examines Creativity and the Importance of Art Education
In this series, members of the Class of 2021 showcase their capstone and thesis projects.
Media and Communications major Nikolai Kachuyevski ’21 advocates for art education, making a personal statement with a visual album that explores creativity and the various journeys people go on throughout their lives.
In August 2019, Kachuyevski released an EP titled The Starting Point. These three tracks were designed to represent undertaking a journey through the way they sound. The first track, Hi, is the beginning of a journey—an exciting venture filled with anticipation. The second track, Journey, illustrates how journeys come with complications and setbacks, but the lyrics indicate that with goals in mind, they can be overcome. The final track, Feeling, has an almost mysterious tone, indicating that there are unknown possibilities ahead, an openness after hurdling the journey’s obstacles.
For his Capstone project, Kachuyevski turned his EP into a visual album, combining all three tracks into a 10-minute video. Accompanying the visual album is a paper detailing the importance of art education and how it can help you grow as a person and thinker.
Art gives individuals a platform to find themselves and why it should be introduced to students during their formative years. For most schools in the United States, many students aren’t getting that introduction to art, dance, and theatre classes—all seeing significant drops since 2008.
Art education can have a tremendous impact on students’ development and even standardized test scores. Studies show that students who took four years of art classes scored 91 points higher on their SAT scores than those who did not. Additionally, art education has also helped decrease the dropout rate from schools. This type of learning offers motivation for students to keep attending school, increasing graduation rates. Art can also help develop motor and communication skills in younger students.
Whether it helps students express themselves, develop skills, give them an outlet, or any other number of reasons, art plays an important role in the education process. This is an idea Kachuyevski hopes to convey with his capstone project.
The Capstone 2021 Series provides a platform for members of the Class to showcase their projects and share their expertise. Capstone is an opportunity for students to engage in an extended project that reflects their academic experiences. Projects combine their fields of study with personal interests.
For more information on Capstone 2021, visit Arcadia.edu.
