D'Art 19: Arts and Education: Towards an international compendium

Co-hosted by UNESCO,
01 April 2005, International

D'Art Report: Arts and education research: towards an international compendium

D'Art Topics in Arts Policy no.19, April 2005

IFACCA, UNESCO and Australia Council for the Arts

Arts and education is a key policy concern for government arts funding agencies worldwide.  As the global network for such agencies, IFACCA has undertaken several projects to encourage information sharing between policy makers, researchers and practitioners, about arts and education. IFACCA has produced an Arts and Education Fact Sheet which outlines the various arts and education projects that it has undertaken to date.

La hoja informativa es disponibile también en español: Hoja informativa: Arte y educación  

D'Art Report

The D'Art research program was used in the development of the publication 'The Wow Factor: Global research compendium on the impact of the arts in education', the result of a collaboration between Professor Anne Bamford, University of Technology Sydney, UNESCO, the Australia Council for the Arts and IFACCA, to establish an international compendium of research demonstrating the impact of what the report terms ‘arts-rich’ educational programmes for children and young people around the world.

The first chapter presents the background and context for the report and offers an overview of the central issues. Chapters 2 to 7 present an analysis of wide-ranging data collected regarding the extent and impact of arts-rich programmes on children and young people. It includes representative case studies of arts-rich programmes in over 35 countries in order to exemplify the issues raised. The concluding chapter draws the observations together for an overall sense of how the different arts-rich programmes can be characterised and compared, and includes recommendations on how, and to what extent, these may be improved in the future. Appendices at the end of the study present some of the data collected from each country, along with other relevant information such as details of the case studies.

Among the report’s main findings are: the arts appear in the educational policy in almost every country in the world; there is a gulf between ‘lip service’ given to arts education and the provisions for it within schools; the term ‘arts education’ is culture and context-specific and the meaning varies from country to country; economically-developed countries tend to embrace new media in the curriculum; in economically developing countries greater emphasis is placed on culture-specific arts; there is a difference in what can be termed education in the arts and education through the arts; arts education has an impact on the child, the teaching and learning environment, and on the community; there is need for more training for key providers of arts education; quality arts education tends to be characterised by a strong partnership between the schools and external arts and community organisations. 

The report is available in print form for €24.90 from Waxmann Publishing and can be ordered via the Waxmann website at http://www.waxmann.com. Case studies are available at http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=29980&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

The Wow Factor is also available in four other languages: Spanish, Korean, Norweigen and German.