In the Australian Curriculum, The Arts is a learning
area that draws together related but distinct art forms. While these art forms
have close relationships and are often used in interrelated ways, each involves
different approaches to arts practices and critical and creative thinking that
reflect distinct bodies of knowledge, understanding and skills. The curriculum
examines past, current and emerging arts practices in each art form across a
range of cultures and places.
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts comprises five
subjects:
- Dance
- Drama
- Media Arts
- Music
- Visual Arts
The arts have the capacity to engage, inspire and
enrich all students, exciting the imagination and encouraging them to reach
their creative and expressive potential. The five arts subjects in the
Australian Curriculum provide opportunities for students to learn how to
create, design, represent, communicate and share their imagined and conceptual
ideas, emotions, observations and experiences.
Rich in tradition, the arts play a major role in the
development and expression of cultures and communities, locally, nationally and
globally. Students communicate ideas in current, traditional and emerging forms
and use arts knowledge and understanding to make sense of their world. The
Australian Curriculum: The Arts values, respects and explores the significant
contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to Australia’s
arts heritage and contemporary arts practices through their distinctive ways of
representing and communicating knowledge, traditions and experience.
In The
Arts, students learn as artists and audience through the intellectual,
emotional and sensory experiences of the arts. They acquire knowledge, skills
and understanding specific to The Arts subjects and develop critical
understanding that informs decision-making and aesthetic choices. Through The
Arts, students learn to express their ideas, thoughts and opinions as they
discover and interpret the world. They learn that designing, producing and
resolving their work is as essential to learning in the arts as is creating a
finished artwork. Students develop their arts knowledge and aesthetic
understanding through a growing comprehension of the distinct and related
languages, symbols, techniques, processes and skills of the arts subjects. Arts
learning provides students with opportunities to engage with creative
industries and arts professionals.
The arts entertain, challenge, provoke responses and
enrich our knowledge of self, communities, world cultures and histories. The
Arts contribute to the development of confident and creative individuals,
nurturing and challenging active and informed citizens. Learning in The Arts is
based on cognitive, affective and sensory/kinaesthetic response to arts
practices as students revisit increasingly complex content, skills and
processes with developing confidence and sophistication across their years of
learning.
The Australian Curriculum: The Arts aims to develop
students’:
- creativity, critical thinking, aesthetic knowledge and
understanding about arts practices, through making and responding to artworks
with increasing self-confidence
- arts knowledge and skills to communicate ideas; they value and
share their arts and life experiences by representing, expressing and
communicating ideas, imagination and observations about their individual and
collective worlds to others in meaningful ways
- use of innovative arts practices with available and emerging
technologies, to express and represent ideas, while displaying empathy for
multiple viewpoints
- understanding of Australia’s histories and traditions through the
arts, engaging with the artworks and practices, both traditional and
contemporary, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
- understanding of local, regional and global cultures, and their
arts histories and traditions, through engaging with the worlds of artists,
artworks, audiences and arts professions.