Arts and Culture in Education

Welcome to the special issue of Policy Futures in Education, entitled ‘Arts and Culture in Education: Questioning and Reimagining Current Practices’. We are excited to share with you this unique collection of articles that explore topics connected to politics, community, inclusion and interdisciplinarity, within policy and practice in arts and cultural education.

As the title implies, this special issue revolves around arts and cultural education. We editors observe that as the world becomes more and more globalized, and social issues reside at the forefront of governments’ agendas, there is a need to explore diverse ways in which change and action might occur. As troublesome political and social events unfold around the globe, the ricochet effect of these on policies, practices and pedagogies associated with arts and culture is inevitable. Such events will have a lasting impact on the future of arts education, and inevitably challenge those who seek to broaden meanings of socially, culturally, economically and politically inclusive arts practices and policies in a range of communities.

We also wanted to tackle the question of cultural rights of specific groups whose voices are not always heard, such as minority and indigenous groups, children and youth at risk, gender diverse, elderly, mixed ability and LGBTQ+. Thus, in the call for papers, we identified several questions that focused on minorities and marginalization. We asked, for example, whose voices dominate and/or are missing within existing arts education policy and practice, and how are societal crises and conflicts reflected in policies regarding arts and cultural education? We are pleased to see that these questions concern many arts education scholars around the globe, and that we can present some of this important work in this special issue.

The articles included in this volume come from a range of cultural contexts and educational environments. The research shared adds to conversations in the realms of policy and practice. The authors contributing to this special issue seek to sustain dialogue that shares a diversity of perspectives and the on-going critical questioning of the role arts education might play in relation to policy, practice, community, and social transformation.

In her article entitled ‘Countering Hate Speech through Arts Education: Addressing Intersections and Policy Implications’, Tuula Jääskeläinen addresses a disturbing and escalating phenomenon that has the capacity to increase hatred against a person or people because of a characteristic they share, or a group to which they belong. She points out that for maintaining democracy, it is important to identify the balance between freedom of expression and protecting other human rights. Jääskeläinen illuminates how art and arts education can challenge hate speech through creating counter narratives. She concludes that the impact of intervention strategies in countering hate speech through arts education is promising but warrants more research.

The notion of politics and difference is a theme that is then extended in the article ‘Centralizing Queer in Finnish Art Education’, by Anniina Suominen, Tiina Pusa, Aapo Raudaskoski and Larissa Haggren. This article resonates with the theme of marginalized voices noted within Jääskeläinen’s article, as Suominen, Pusa, Raudaskoski and Haggren investigate relations between policy and practice in relation to the Finnish National Core Curriculum for basic education for visual arts as it relates to the broader Finnish culture of power and politics. These authors specifically examine if and how gender diversity and queer are present in the policies guiding Finnish art education and how these texts might influence praxis.

The notion of social transformation is identified in the article by Serenity Wise, Ralph Buck, Rose Martin and Longqi Yu, titled ‘Community Dance as a Democratic Dialogue’. This article explores the ways in which community dance could have democratizing effects on its participants, encouraging people to actively create inclusive, participatory and empowering spaces. The authors pose the questions: how might community dance have a role to play within fostering democratic values in our world? And how do the rhetoric and politics of various values, along with equality of these values, operate in various community dance contexts?

Similarly, the notion of inclusion and participation is identified as key in the article ‘Disabilities within Sweden’s Art and Music Schools: Discourses of Inclusion, Policy and Practice’ by Adriana Di Lorenzo Tillborg, who asks the question: how are art and music school practice, policy and inclusion of pupils with mixed abilities connected within and through leaders’ discursive practices? Gathering data from focus group conversations with art and music school leaders in Sweden, Tillborg’s findings illuminate that there are tensions between multicentric inclusion discourse versus normality discourse as well as between multicentric inclusion discourse versus specialization discourse.

A critical questioning of policy is further explored in Charlotte Svendler Nielsen and Liesl Hartman’s article, ‘Advancing Our Futures: Educational Potential of Interdisciplinary Artistic Projects to Children “At-Risk” in Denmark and South Africa’. Svendler Nielsen and Hartman look at how arts education policies, with specific attention on UNESCO’s Seoul Agenda for Arts Education, can be enacted within schools in both Denmark and South Africa. Drawing on a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology, Svendler Nielsen and Hartman focus on what importance arts education might have in such contexts, especially to children considered to be ‘at-risk’ within their respective environments.

UNESCO’s policies are also the focus of Nicholas Rowe’s article, ‘From Global Policy to Tertiary Pedagogy: Transformational Thresholds for Creative Arts Degrees’. Rowe draws on three UNESCO strategic documents associated with arts education, and connects these to Threshold Concept theory as a means of framing learning challenges, and in turn to highlight the professional development needs of designers of tertiary curricula. Within his article, Rowe critically reflects his own experiences of co-designing tertiary degree programmes in New Zealand, China and Fiji. From this reflection there are key conceptual thresholds Rowe identifies that can challenge tertiary educators when seeking to align institutional teaching practices with contemporary global policies on arts education.

With the UNESCO Seoul Agenda (2010) calling for ‘a concerted effort to realize the full potential of high quality arts education to positively renew educational systems, to achieve crucial social and cultural objectives, and ultimately to benefit children, youth and life-long learners of all ages’ (2), this special issue seeks to present current research on the practice policy gap and inequality in terms of access to arts and culture. We hope that this volume can offer a rich insight to contemporary considerations of policy and practice in arts and cultural education.