The Role of Plastic Arts in Confirming Cultural Identity in the Age of Social Media

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of plastic arts in confirming cultural identity by organizing a series of artistic activities for a sample of schoolchildren in the city of Al-Ahsa, including workshops, a wall painting, and an art exhibition. The study population and sample included (66) students from schools where art education students applied for the practical training course for the academic year 2022/2023. Because of the nature of the study, the scale of plastic arts within aesthetic criteria, which created by the researchers, was used in the study to evaluate these activities. The study's findings included the following: The fields of plastic arts (exhibitions, mural painting, and workshops) had a low level of promotion of cultural identity values and less than the levels of contribution to art education skills that were standard in the five-point Likert scale. The students' interaction with the plastic arts was minimal, which indicates that they place a low value on their perceived cultural identities. Additionally, there are no differences in how students react to academic disciplines and the visual arts, which support cultural identity values. The results indicated that national values and circumvention had very little impact. Through the results of the simple regression analysis, it demonstrated that the dimension of the impact of digital applications on cultural identity as a dependent variable has a statistically significant effect. The study recommended that schools should emphasize the visual arts and hold workshops to encourage their use, as well as workshops that affirm the values of cultural identity, society, its traditions, and ethics.