Arts Education – an entitlement for all young Australians.
This idea has arrived in full force, as was confirmed in the 2010 national survey on Australian participation in the arts. A staggering 90% of respondents confirmed that 'the Arts should be an important part of the education of every Australian'. In 2008, the report from the Australia 2020 Summit called for educational authorities to 'Mandate creative, visual and performing arts subjects in national curricula with appropriate reporting requirements for schools'. Internationally, UNESCO affirmed 'arts education as the foundation for balanced creative, cognitive, emotional, aesthetic and social development of children, youth and life-long learners'. Now, Australian schooling is about to be enriched by the introduction of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts Foundation to Year 10.
Welcome to Arts-POP: a site to turn the idea of arts education into the practice of arts education. This site, which delivers expert advice in the arts through Packages of Practice (Arts-POP), will help Australian teachers develop lessons, units of work and classroom strategies. Arts-Pop will make a deep and lasting impact and ensure the place of the arts in the mainstream of Australian education. The principles underpinning the design of Arts-POP have been outlined here.
Of the ten packages that make up Arts-POP, five are art-form specific, with a package dedicated to Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. These packages illustrate how a unit of work can be designed, delivered and evaluated to show how specific aesthetic knowledge and skills can be achieved and made visible. The remaining five packages address the challenges of implementing the arts curriculum for teachers, school leaders and school communities. For the arts to deliver their full benefits to Australian education and society, teachers will need to develop strategies that address their use of space and time, the resources they deploy, and how they will build their own expertise in arts education. The final package evidences the impact of high quality arts education on students, classrooms, schools and communities.