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Transcript
Transcript of the Launch of the Arts Education Report and Announcement of Arts Funding Research
National Gallery of Australia
Thursday 12 August 2004
Brendan Nelson:
I want to firstly welcome my colleague and my friend, Senator Helen Coonan, the Minister for Communication, Information Technology and the Arts; also Tamara Winnikoff, Executive Director of the National Association of Visual Arts. We also have Anne Bamford from the University of Technology Sydney and Michael Snelling, who is the Chair of the New Media Arts Board and acting Chair of the Visual Arts and Crafts Board. And to those of you who’ve come, thank you very much for covering this, it’s extremely important. Lisa Collier’s here of course, from the Australia Council.
In recognising, of course, the Ngunnawall and remembering them first and foremost.
Today’s an extremely important day. There are two things that I wish to do. The first is to formally announce the release of the report that we’ve had commissioned by the Australian Council of Educational Research into visual arts education in Australia. And what it has done is examined four projects in particular, which have looked at music in the Northern Territory, one involving Aboriginal students; one project in Victoria looking at students who are disengaged, or at least who are seriously at risk; and also the Direk School in South Australia. The study has found, consistent with the Champions for Change Study in the United States, that students who are immersed in arts generally perform better than students who are not arts rich, as it’s described in the school sector. In fact, the Arts@Direk Project, which you’ll find in the study, has found that students in Year 4, who were actively involved in the dramatic and visual arts programme at the school, their writing improved, they were actively engaged with other students, they were working more collaboratively and were able to express themselves more proficiently than those who were not involved. And that indeed is a solid investment of $100,000 and the study that’s been done collaboratively with Senator Coonan’s Department, and also with the Australia Council.
Arts in Australia is, and indeed in any country, is extremely important. Our destiny and our future as a nation will be determined, not by the economic indices with which we are so understandably concerned, but in the long term by our values and our beliefs, the way that we relate to one another as people and the way that we see our place in the world. And arts, and visual arts in particular, is about cognitive, aesthetic and experiential skills which are no less important to the development of human beings and the achievement of human potential than the fundaments of reading and writing and basic communication.
We are determined to see that, as a nation, we better understand how visual arts and music, which we are currently looking at, is being studied and taught in Australian schools and today Senator Coonan and I are jointly announcing that up to $250,000 will be committed jointly by our portfolios, to examine visual arts education in Australian schools, in universities, in vocational education and training and indeed in adult learning. In the end, the soul from our generation will be passed to the next through arts, through values, through beliefs, and indeed through education and research, which is driven in no small way of course, by the Australia Council and the National Association for Visual Arts. Whilst this is not an announcement that may necessarily find itself on the front page of every newspaper in the country, it will lay a foundation in very much building our nation’s future and ultimately, as I say, the things by which we will be judged and upon which we will reflect as a people. Visual arts, in the end, is about making sure that we have the capacity to reflect as individuals and as a nation upon who we are, and then ultimately have the courage to do what we believe to be right, having been inspired by arts generally and visual arts in particular.
Senator Helen Coonan:
Thank you Brendan, and to all of the special guests and people with a real stake in what we’re doing today, welcome. I’m really delighted, as part of the communications and information technology portfolio, to also have the arts involved in what I’m doing and what I’m interested in.
I want to basically reiterate what Brendan has said. I think that the more we look at the complexities in which we live in today’s society the more we want to live in a community that means something to us. We don’t only want to live in economy, an economy enables us to do a lot of things but basically it comes down to how we relate to our community. And I think that the really interesting thing that this report that we’re releasing, the Evaluation of School Based Arts Education Programmes in Australian Schools, what it really does is reinforce what a powerful tool the arts is, to putting children in touch with themselves, to their understanding of the broader society in which they live. And in particular this report talks about how this can help Indigenous children, and people in more remote locations actually become much more in touch, not only with their own community, but relate to the world outside. I think that it is absolutely critical that we have this kind of emphasis on the arts and that it be made available to all children and I think that the report is a very very useful tool and resource for teachers to look at how they can better enable students to participate in and enjoy the arts and for it to be a real learning block for children’s future.
The other thing that I’d just like to say, picking up on Brendan’s announcement of our release, that the Australian Government has agreed to provide funding of up to $250,000 towards research into visual art, craft, design and visual communications education. I mean the sense of this, I think, is overwhelming, because nowadays so many of the applications for jobs involve having some ability to be able to understand visual communication. When you think of the numbers of occupations that do involve some design element I think it’s not only important for people’s general development, but perhaps also for their vocational skills. So I would also like to add my thanks to the Australia Council for the Arts, and the National Association for the Visual Arts, and to all of those involved in actually bringing to fruition these splendid projects. I cannot tell you how pleased I am and how important I think it is that the Australian Government is an enabler of the arts, and particularly for our children. So thank you very much.
Tamara Winnikoff:
First of all I want to very very warmly thank the two Minister’s, Brendan Nelson and Helen Coonan, and to acknowledge the role of the Australia Council in this very significant moment for the visual arts, craft and design sector and for visual education generally in Australia. When I was thinking about today I thought one of the pivotal moments for me in coming to this conclusion, although I suppose it’s transit rather than conclusion, was a conversation I had with a poet friend of mine a few years ago, where he was adamantly saying that the only way in which we imagine and we articulate is through the word. And of course as a person who’s dedicated my life to the visual I had to disagree with him. We argued about it for hours (it was very pleasurable) but what it led me to believe was that we, in spite of the fact that we use visual imagery and we imagine in images all the time. It’s relatively little understood because the way that our society has developed, or the sort of recognition that we have, is that we privilege text. And we think that the only way we effectively communicate is through the word, but in fact of course images have always been important but increasingly now the use of imagery in every imaginable medium is – I don’t want to say eclipsing the word, but at least becoming of equivalent importance and certainly to our children who use the wizzo new technologies of video streaming to mobile phones, computers, television and their obsession and interest in advertising and in media. This has become an absolutely critical question for all of us and for our futures, not only because we need to be visually articulate and to be able to decode the visual meaning in our lives, but also because it provides us, as Senator Coonan was saying, with really important tools in terms of the world of work, in the world of innovation, and increasingly now we’re hearing discussion about the role of creative industries in our future and the fact that Australia, as a nation, has to think smarter and be cleverer. We believe that this is our future. So we’re extremely grateful to the Government for supporting our vision, for participating with us in the journey and we’re greatly looking forward to the outcomes of this study making a substantial difference to the way that children are educated for the future.
Michael Snelling:
I support all of those comments of Tamara’s, but also all of your’s and as I’m standing in for our Chairman today, David Gonsky, a few points of his I think are worth mentioning.
The Council itself has had a long standing commitment to the role of education and to be able to see such a significant partnership as this between two Ministries, but also between the industry, represented through NAVA and the Council itself, the Australia Council itself, as a statutory body of the Government and as its major advisory body in this instance. It’s very exciting to see this kind of initiative. It’s something that, as I was saying to you Brendan earlier, is almost full circle for me. I was at one point employed, nearly 30 years ago, as a research consultant in education, on crafts in Australia for a federal government inquiry and to find, 30 years later, that there’s another substantial investigation going on which I hope will also have a significant impact on the way that our children are taught, is more than encouraging.
The other thing is that the research report that Senator Coonan mentioned that was released earlier endorsed that position that we all know, that no matter whether you’re athletes or artists, early identification of those skills and talents and an enthusiasm for, not only sport, but also art, pays huge dividends both to the individual and to the society. There’s no question at all that the Council’s role in endorsing, supporting and looking for very positive outcomes for this initiative, for the research study, and for the future of our education system in the arts is absolutely thrilling, thrilling for the Council. So congratulations and thank you.
Anne Bamford:
As a researcher involved in the initial study, it was amazing the impact that it had on the children who were involved. I think this is a particularly good place to launch such a thing because we’re surrounded by evidence of how our culture is displayed through our visual means, and I think that’s vital. I think it’s also very important that we’ve got a match of both educational and communications and arts people working together, because the visual is certainly key in all those areas in the future. We learned so much of what we learn through the visual images. Every decision we now make is actually governed by a whole lot of visual parameters, whether it’s the size of our font or the colours that we’re going to use for our headlines. So the fact that that’s coming together in those technologies and through education, I think’s vital and if we’re looking at innovation in the future, that innovation is going to be led by people who are able to both interpret, but also to lead in the way they communicate their messages through images. So I just want to commend the support for this and I look forward to being leaders in the world in terms of the way we can build visual into the education system and lead it forward into the way people communicate in the future. Thank you.
Please see related media releases at: http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Nelson/2004/08/n857120804.asp; and
http://www.dest.gov.au/Ministers/Media/Nelson/2004/08/n858120804.asp
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