Widening participation creatively: Creative arts education for social inclusion

University participation among students from low socio-economic backgrounds in Australia is low and nationwide strategies are in place to help bridge the gap. This article presents a preliminary evaluation of a creative arts-based outreach program to raise awareness and aspiration for university study among students from low-income backgrounds. The program is part of a national Australian federally funded initiative, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program. It reviews an outreach advertising program facilitated by a Brisbane university. We argue that arts education has a particular role in provoking attitudinal change, due to the self-reflective, meaning-making and expressive characteristics of arts-based disciplines. In evaluating the advertising program, the value of creativity and trust as techniques of student engagement is considered. Evaluation occurred in two outer suburban high schools in Brisbane (a State capital city), using surveys and ethnographic fieldwork. The findings support an engagement model that employs creativity and uses student facilitators (undergraduate and postgraduate) to deliver the program, to meet the program's aims.

Building creative connections: An analysis of a creative arts widening participation program

Widening participation or outreach agendas have been a major part of higher education policy since the early 2000s. These policies and programs seek to increase marginalised groups’ access to further study through activities, tutoring programs, workshops, and other provisions. Some programs openly state their intention to assist people from low socioeconomic backgrounds to become more civically engaged and socially mobile by improving their education, which creates an immediate link between education and social capital (see Morley 2012; Hillmert and Jacob 2010). Social capital refers to the ‘connections among individuals’ and the consequent value of the things they do together (Putnam 2000; Gauntlett 2011). Media and creative arts widening participation programs, arguably, are better equipped to build social capital than any other form of outreach, due to their relationship-building capacity (Gauntlett 2011; Kinder and Harland 2004). This article analyses Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Widening Participation Program. It investigates social capital and its relationship with higher education in outreach initiatives in order to identify how media and creative arts widening participation programs have the capacity to influence the attitudes of low socioeconomic background students towards higher education.

Creative entrepreneurship education for graduate employability in the creative arts

The higher education sector in Australia is under increasing pressure to prove quality and efficacy of education provision, including graduate outcomes. One of the central tasks of higher education has become to prepare nascent professionals as far as possible for initial employment and future working lives beyond this (Boden & Nedeva, 2010). Tertiary educators in the creative arts face significant and distinctive challenges in demonstrating graduate employability, and creative graduates consistently have the poorest outcomes of any subject grouping. In part, this is because the national graduate destinations survey (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2012) does not cater to the distinctive ‘portfolio’ nature of creative careers, or take account of the fact that creative careers can take concerted effort over several years to establish (e.g., McCowan & Wyganowska, 2010). However, it is worth asking whether we as tertiary arts educators are doing enough to prepare creative arts students for the world of work, particularly given that the majority of them will be self-employed to some degree (Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011, Throsby & Zednik, 2010), and will be challenged to build their own careers without recourse to the support of HR departments or intra-firm promotion schemes. It has been demonstrated empirically that career management and creative enterprise skills are among the most important graduate capabilities in determining early creative career success (Bridgstock, 2011), although these skills do not appear in the Learning and Teaching Academic Standards for the Creative and Performing Arts (2010). This paper explores the nature and development of enterprise capabilities for creative arts students (as distinct from students of the business school), examines best practice in the field internationally, and proposes a theoretically-driven creative arts-specific enterprise curriculum model which commences in first year, for demonstrable impact on student enterprise behaviours (such as grant seeking, professional networking and intention to start an enterprise) and employability.

The educational affordances of generative media in arts education

Network Jamming systems provide real-time collaborative media performance experiences for novice or inexperienced users. In this paper we will outline the theoretical and developmental drivers for our Network Jamming software, called jam2jam. jam2jam employs generative algorithmic techniques with particular implications for accessibility and learning. We will describe how theories of engagement have directed the design and development of jam2jam and show how iterative testing cycles in numerous international sites have informed the evolution of the system and its educational potential. Generative media systems present an opportunity for users to leverage computational systems to make sense of complex media forms through interactive and collaborative experiences. Generative music and art are a relatively new phenomenon that use procedural invention as a creative technique to produce music and visual media. These kinds of systems present a range of affordances that can facilitate new kinds of relationships with music and media performance and production. Early systems have demonstrated the potential to provide access to collaborative ensemble experiences to users with little formal musical or artistic expertise.This presentation examines the educational affordances of these systems evidenced by field data drawn from the Network Jamming Project. These generative performance systems enable access to a unique kind of music/media’ ensemble performance with very little musical/ media knowledge or skill and they further offer the possibility of unique interactive relationships with artists and creative knowledge through collaborative performance. Through the process of observing, documenting and analysing young people interacting with the generative media software jam2jam a theory of meaningful engagement has emerged from the need to describe and codify how users experience creative engagement with music/media performance and the locations of meaning. In this research we observed that the musical metaphors and practices of ‘ensemble’ or collaborative performance and improvisation as a creative process for experienced musicians can be made available to novice users. The relational meanings of these musical practices afford access to high level personal, social and cultural experiences. Within the creative process of collaborative improvisation lie a series of modes of creative engagement that move from appreciation through exploration, selection, direction toward embodiment. The expressive sounds and visions made in real-time by improvisers collaborating are immediate and compelling. Generative media systems let novices access these experiences with simple interfaces that allow them to make highly professional and expressive sonic and visual content simply by using gestures and being attentive and perceptive to their collaborators. These kinds of experiences present the potential for highly complex expressive interactions with sound and media as a performance. Evidence that has emerged from this research suggest that collaborative performance with generative media is transformative and meaningful. In this presentation we draw out these ideas around an emerging theory of meaningful engagement that has evolved from the development of network jamming software. Primarily we focus on demonstrating how these experiences might lead to understandings that may be of educational and social benefit.

Is journalism best located in the creative arts or as a communication discipline?

This paper considers the implications of journalism research being located within the Field of Research associated with the creative arts and writing in the recent Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) evaluations. While noting that this classification does capture a significant trajectory in Australian journalism research, it also points to some anomalous implications of understanding journalism as an arts discipline, given its historical co-location in universities with communications disciplines, and the mutually reinforcing relationships between the two fields.

Computing in performing arts education and practice

The performing arts have traditionally made limited use of and showed limited acceptance of computing technology. There are cognitive, physical, environmental, and social influences on the use of computers in performing arts. This paper will examine those influences on the practice of computers in the performing arts and their implications for education in those areas. These implications for the learning environment include infrastructure, interface design, industrial design, and software functionality. Although many of the issues raised in this paper are common to all visual and performing arts, there are significant differences between them which require abstraction of the concepts presented in this paper beyond the more practical focus intended. In particular there are differences in the ways humans are involved in the presentation of a work, and the transitory verses static nature of time in art products.

Media Literacy through Arts Education in Australia

Media arts has been included as one of five Arts subjects for the new Australian Curriculum and will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to year six, and elective for children in years seven to twelve. While media education has historically been associated with English curriculum in Australia, it has also occurred through the Arts since at least the 1960s and creative practice has almost always been included as an aspect of official media curricula. This chapter investigates the possibilities for creative and critical learning enabled through media arts by discussing the media learning of one primary school student. This chapter investigates the possibilities for creative and critical learning enabled through the inclusion of media arts in the curriculum. Media arts has been included as one of five Arts subjects for the new Australian Curriculum and will become mandatory learning for all Australian children from pre-school to year six, and elective for children in years seven to twelve. Media education has historically been associated with English curriculum in Australia due to its development through the critical reading tradition. However, media literacy education in secondary schools has also occurred through the Arts since at least the 1960s and creative practice has almost always been included as an aspect of official media curricula. This chapter investigates the media learning of one primary school student, to consider the nature of creative learning and how this relates to the ‘critical’ aspects of media arts curriculum. We undertook this work as part of a large research project that has been investigating the relationship between digital media and traditional literacy outcomes in a primary school.

Life Drama : an arts education response to social and cultural challenges in Papua New Guinea

The Life Drama program is a theatre-based experiential learning program developed in Papua New Guinea over the past seven years. The Life Drama team recognises that a significant proportion of “education” for learners of all ages takes place outside formal education systems, particularly in developing nations such as Papua New Guinea. If arts education principles and practices are to contribute meaningfully and powerfully to resolving social and cultural challenges, it is important to recognise that many learners and educators will encounter and use these principles and practices outside of school or university settings. This paper briefly describes the Life Drama program and its context, highlights its two streams of operation (community educators and teacher educators) and indicates some ways in which an arts-based education initiative like Life Drama contributes to Goal 3 of the Seoul Agenda:“Apply arts education principles and practices to contribute to resolving the social and cultural challenges facing today‟s world.” In particular, the project addresses sub-goal 3b:“Recognize and develop the social and cultural well-being dimensions of arts education”.

Equally engaged : demystifying tertiary study in the creative arts to equity communities

The participation rate of students from low socio-economic (SES) backgrounds into Australian universities remains low. A nationwide initiative to raise participation rates aims to stimulate interest, highlight career possibilities and enhance understanding of university. The program also aims to improve retention and completion rates of those students. This paper provides a case study and preliminary evaluation of QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty’s (CIF) outreach programs to low SES school students, operating since 2012. Programs are conducted across the disciplines of Dance, Drama, Media, Digitalstorytelling, Music and Entertainment. Presenting the arts and creative industries as a viable study / career pathway is particularly challenging to low SES groups. However, the focus on the creative industries aims to broaden understanding of arts and creativity, emphasising the significance of digital technology in the transformation of the workforce, providing new career opportunities in the creative and non-creative sectors. CIF’s outreach programs have been delivered to hundreds of students and this paper presents a case study and evaluation of several programs.

Creative arts research : a long path to acceptance

The majority of tertiary practice-led creative arts disciplines became part of the Australian university system as a result of the creation of the Unified National System of tertiary education in 1988. Over the past two decades, research has grown as the yardstick by which academic performance in the Australian university sector is recognised and rewarded. Academics in artistic disciplines, who struggled to adapt to a culture and workload expectations different from their previous, predominantly teaching based, employment, continue to see their research under-valued within the established evaluation framework. Despite a late 1990s Australian government funded inquiry, many of the inequities remain. While the Excellence in Research in Australia (ERA) exercise has acknowledged the non-text outputs of artist-academics in its evaluation of 'research outcomes', much of the process remains resolutely framed by measures that work against creative arts researchers.

Arts education and iPads in the early years

This chapter takes as a working premise that digital culture is embedded in the every-day life experiences of most children living in post-industrial societies, both in home and, increasingly, in educational contexts. We outline how our research project investigated strategies for developing learning in the arts for young children by using the iPad as a creative device, rather than one on which they consume content in the form of games, on demand television and streaming video. We ask critical questions around creative ecologies and creative production; these grow from our observations on how young children and their families engaged with iPads through activities such as combining painting with digital photography. Analysis of work samples produced by children during the project enables interrogation of the ways in which young children can participate in arts practices and learning when digital media production is available. The chapter is structured around three themes of practice for iPad-based arts and creative education in preschool settings.

The Yonder project: Stories of impact, change, and capacity building through engagement in arts education

This thesis examined the long-term impact of the community arts education project Yonder, a collaboration between Education Queensland and Queensland Performing Arts Centre. The findings from the data reveal that the project was still having impact twelve months after its completion and that in some instances the project served as a 'circuit-breaker', especially for special needs students and struggling students. The intervention of a rich arts project proved to be an opportunity for these students to learn in a different way and to perceive themselves in a new and reinvented light. This confidence was found to transfer into other aspects of their learning.