The Arts

The five Arts subjects in the Australian Curriculum are Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music, and Visual Arts. Together they 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.

Aims

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.

These aims are extended and complemented by specific aims for each Arts subject