Arts, Young Global Citizens, and Social Responsibility: A Dialogue with Baitong Yan

“If we conform to this market, maybe we will do faster and better. But should we conform to this market, or should we challenge and lead this market to guide educators to do the right thing?” – Baitong Yan

NOBO (Art Has No Boundaries) is an international education non-profit organization founded in New York City in 2016. It aims to cultivate children and young adults’ global awareness and a sense of social responsibility without any barriers from nationality, culture, and language. Each year, NOBO develops a curriculum and curates a children’s art exhibition around a global issue, such as "a drop of water", "a tree, a city", etc. In the past four years, its annual exhibitions have toured around five countries including China, the United States, France, Brazil, and Kenya, with nearly 40,000 children from 15 countries participating in the exhibitions.

This May, NOBO joined Beijing Normal University to establish the first-ever research committee in China that focuses on children’s global competence. In the next 5-10 years, the research committee plans to develop courses around children's global competence, train globally competent educators and schools, and present its teaching and research outcomes in education forums, art exhibitions, and so on to create a "research —> practice —> communication —> research" closed-loop for research and development.

Ms. Baitong Yan is the founder of NOBO and the director of ANOBO international education R&D team. She received her master's degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University and has many years of experience in children's education and education charity. Baitong advocates using arts in cross-cultural education to cultivate socially responsible young global citizens.

In today’s interview, we chat with Baitong about how she founded NOBO, her understanding of global competence, and her experiences in arts education and curating international art exhibitions.

What kind of opportunity prompted you to found NOBO in New York City?

I was then a first-year graduate student at Columbia University. I have always been very eager to learn about American food, culture, arts scene, and so on. But many Chinese students around me are not very willing to try American food, culture, or other exciting things. But as for American food, though many of them said they are not used to it, I feel like there are tons of good foods and they just haven’t encountered the ones they like.

So, I thought, why did we come here but remain closed to the new culture? This is something that I think we didn’t do well in, so I hope the next generation can have an open mind from a young age and truly develop their appreciation for those differences and diversity. 

My own academic background is in special needs children’s education, young adults’ education, and developmental psychology. As an international student, I have been deeply influenced by the international and diverse living and learning atmosphere at Columbia, which made me realize the importance of cultivating children's global awareness and social responsibility through education.

“A Drop of Water” Exhibition on Times Square Billboards

NOBO hopes to cultivate children's global awareness and social responsibility through arts education. What do you think is unique about the arts in developing children's global perspectives?

I did an internship in a special needs school where children had autism, Down Syndrome, and many other special needs. The school used a lot of art therapy to help them express themselves and communicate with others, so I knew early on that art is a very fascinating way that allows people to communicate without being restricted by their health conditions, languages, cultures, and ethnicity. So, I believe that when children from all over the world have the opportunity to work for a unified goal through the language of arts, they can learn to respect each other's culture and even appreciate each other's differences.

How did you decide to achieve this goal in the form of a non-profit organization?

Unlike China, there are many well-known educational companies or institutions in the United States that are all private non-profit organizations. The advantage of this type of organization is that it will not measure the value of its existence by an increase in profits, but rather in its social value and its contribution to public welfare. Those extra revenues are not put into the pockets of shareholders but are used for further research and development.

An education enterprise is the exact place where you need a lot of money for curriculum development, teachers’ training, and many more fields that take a lot of time but may not be seen by the public. But these fields are actually the core of education, so this kind of private, non-profit enterprise often pays more attention to those core elements like curriculum development and teachers’ training. So, we think that non-profit is the better way to do education.

NOBO children’s arts exhibition in Paris

After you founded NOBO, your team curated many art exhibitions that give children a platform to create and display their artworks based on a global issue. When you first started curating children's art exhibitions, did you meet any challenges?

Yes. For example, since our exhibition has limited space, we can’t show all the artworks submitted by our children, so we have to make a selection. When we were launching our project in China, we received a lot of feedback from the market saying that, "You have to turn it into a contest with first, second, and third prizes and many outstanding awards, so that you can better promote your project with those kids’ parents." 

But what we have always been trying to do is not a contest of any kind, but instead, a public platform in which children can engage in and speak out on specific global issues such as environmental protection or resource sustainability. I was therefore thinking at that time, if we conform to this market, maybe we will be faster and better. But should we conform to this market, or should we challenge and lead this market to guide educators to do the right thing and convey the correct education philosophy?

Do you feel that making it a contest violates your original intention for starting this art exhibition?

I hope that through our activities, we will prepare young global citizens with social responsibility. If you want to develop their social responsibility, then you can't be thinking about private profits or material gain. This is a fundamental principle that we hold, so we don't want to make it a contest where people compete only for their private gain. But if we are talking about some other competitive activities, like the Olympics, then of course it should be a contest.

So later, we insisted on our idea and did not set any first, second, or third prizes. But every child who worked hard gets a small certificate called "Little World Citizen" as an encouragement. 

Also, at the very beginning, I just wanted to spend my spare time doing something meaningful to society. At first, all members of our team were just volunteers. It was in NOBO’s third year that I graduated from Columbia and established a formal team. I myself only started to work here full-time from the fourth year. But I didn’t expect that many professors I consulted would genuinely offer me tons of help. After graduation, my alma mater also has been giving me great support.

“One Tree, One City” Exhibition in Brazil

“A Drop of Water” Exhibition at Beijing Today Gallery

After such a long time of exploring and trying new things, NOBO has already organized four international art exhibitions, developed curriculums, hosted education summits, and established a global competence research committee. Right now, how do you understand social responsibility and global competence? How does NOBO incorporate those educational philosophies into its programs?

I think global competence is about how we can more effectively explore, learn, communicate, cooperate, and grow with people of different backgrounds and values ​​in this globalized world to make our planet a better place. We hope that with academic research as our core, we will develop our teachers’ training as our bridge to real-world impact and our curriculum as a path to implement our education philosophy. In this way, we can put children's global competence education into real practice. 

An advantage of our team is that we are doing art exhibitions. Through exhibitions, the research outcomes in the academic field of education can quickly be turned into large-scale public teaching examples, thereby connecting academic research to the public. In this way, we avoid the situation where we are doing academic research but the public doesn’t know what we are doing and how it’s useful. The public engagement aspect therefore helps us to harvest more meaningful data, which can be invested back into our academic research, thus forming a closed loop of research, practice, communication, and re-investment into research.

The global competence framework proposed by NOBO actually includes five components: exploring the world, understanding the diversity, exchanging ideas in various ways, putting ideas into practice, and caring and be grateful for others. Is there a component of global competence that children nowadays are in lack the most?

Actually, from the perspective of an educator, we tend to think more about what kind of education we can provide to kids. We can't say what kids lack, because they are still in the process of learning and growing. As an educator, what we consider is which aspect of education we need to strengthen for our children.

I think what needs to be strengthened is the component of “putting ideas into practice.” How we grow is not through stories that people tell us or theories we learn in classrooms, but rather through real personal experience. Therefore, we don’t want children to only have the curiosity and awareness to explore the world but not have a place to practice what they learn and engage with other members of society.

This is also the reason why we want to do art exhibitions, since we hope that the knowledge they gained can be applied to something with real-world impact. Compared to China, the U.S. has more social resources for children and a more complete system in this area of social impact. For China, it needs more resources from society to provide children more opportunities to make an impact. 

Kids Talking to Robots at Microsoft 365

Do you think it is necessary to promote the global and artistic competencies for children in lower social status with limited access to education resources?

In fact, “competence” education is not a single academic subject or a skill of its own. It is actually integrated into every academic discipline. If a kid can master such a global competence, we can’t say that it is more important than him learning a new skill, but we believe it will make a different impact on his life. Take sewing for example. Children not only learn to use sewing machines, but they can also see many famous designers from all over the world and learn how to integrate their different designs into their own sewing. This internal drive to learn and explore the world will benefit your mind and your abilities for life.

In 2020, with the COVID pandemic and changes in international relations, the trend of deglobalization becomes more prominent. In your opinion, are there any new importance in cultivating children’s artistic and global competencies? What are your prospects for the future development of NOBO?

There is no doubt that in such a time, global competence education for children is very important. And this situation is both a challenge and an opportunity for us. Children nowadays grow up in an environment where the world is closely connected, and diverse values ​​are constantly clashing with each other. They are thus more dependent on each other than our generation. Therefore, this year is especially important for educators to reflect on what kind of education we want to provide to the next generation.

Our current plan for the next 3-5 years is to carry out our five-year closed-loop step by step. At present, most of the academic activities in the education industry has stopped on the step of research, so we hope to use the public as a connection point and use our exhibitions to add some new breath to the field of education research and practices. I hope that after five years, we can bring some innovations to education academics.

Opening Forum with Arts Scholars and Professionals at Beijing Today Gallery

2020 Children’s Global Competence Education Summit at Columbia Global Centers | Beijing

To learn more about NOBOundaries Education, please visit noboundariesartshow.org or follow their WeChat Official Account at “ANOBO WOLRD.”

Interviewer: Emily Zhang

Editor: Yanni Li, Jackson Barkstrom, Emily Zhang