Arts-POP - Home

Impact: Students benefit from high quality arts education.

Expertise: The arts encourages a transition beyond the teacher as content expert or facilitator to the teacher as activator.

Dance: Learning in dance can be integrated into a range of pedagogical approaches.

Resources: Arts organisations provide support, advice and practical assistance for arts education.

Space: Media Arts activities provide students with the opportunity to work outdoors.

Drama: Moments of theatre spring naturally out of process drama.

Impact: The arts increase student participation and engagement in school.

Media Arts: Year 4 student illustration from the 'Multimodal Storytelling' unit – Wet and Wild Water Park, Gold Coast.

Space: Creative use of space in dance.

Visual Arts: Students creatively engage with media and two, three and four-dimensional forms inspired by abstract artworks, and artists including Picasso.

Time: Allowing time for setting up before performing.

Drama: TV reporters interview a child-labourer (teacher-in-role) in 'The Treasure of Trivandrum' drama.

Visual Arts: Artwork in the process of completion from the 'Abstractable Me' curriculum unit.

Time: Arts learning needs to occur on a regular basis and in a variety of blocks of time.

Resources: The arts link with the general capability of ICT.

Media Arts: Year 4 students using tablets to take digital images of their illustrations.

Resources: A hybrid arts approach delivers high quality arts learning and also connects to other key learning areas.

Drama: Opportunities for talk, as the reporters conduct interviews.

Impact: Collaborative music making supports higher order skill development.

Visual Arts: Year 5 students from Kingston State School making a three-dimensional self portrait from plasticine.

Time: Students combining music performance and ICT skills with computer recording.

Expertise: Professional Learning Networks such as Scootle Community help to connect teachers to key areas of interest.

Media Arts: Year 4 students recording sound effects for their ebooks.

Expertise: Online resources support teachers to gain and utilise the expertise to implement the arts curriculum.

Drama: Students present to the Maharajah in 'The Treasure of Trivandrum' unit.

Dance: Discovering movement qualities with early years students

Music: Learning music provides a range of opportunities and extensions.

Space: Music learning can take place in a room of any size, or outdoors.

Space: Drama space provides opportunity for students to engage in varied activities.

Dance: Using fabric to stimulate the imagination in the 'Metamorphosis' unit.

Music: Wanguri Primary School Year 6 notation lesson – 'African Drumming' unit.

Resources: Arts organisations provide advice and support to educators through assisting arts activities in schools.

Dance: Exploring the elements of dance.

Music: Wanguri Primary School, Darwin – Year 6 drumming ensemble.

Impact: Arts and entertainment industries are major employers of Australian creative talent.

Impact: Students learning through using mobile devices supports 21st century skills.

Time: Teaching time can be maximised by developing strong relationships with the arts industry.

Music: Wanguri Primary School, Darwin, NT, located in the suburb Wanguri, in the heart of Larrakia Nation and Saltwater Country.

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.