International Arts Education Week
This week is International Arts Education Week. Established by UNESCO in 2011, International Arts Education Week recognizes that art “is an essential component of a comprehensive education for the full development of the individual.”
Why Arts Education Matters
In 2020, UNSECO Director-General Audrey Azoulay acknowledged International Arts Education Week by talking about the power of the arts to expand our perspectives and develop our creativity. Arts education changes the lives of students, and those changes aren’t limited to what unfurls on the page or the stage.
“[Arts education] contributes to social-emotional well-being and improves learning outcomes,” he noted. “It is a catalyst for social and economic development.”
The University of Florida takes this further. They quote research from John Hopkins University School of Education that argues “that instruction becomes more effective when educators integrate creative activities and make them central to academic development.”
“Across disciplines, including STEM, there’s room to reimagine classes with a strong emphasis on drawing, painting, playing music, performing drama, and other creative pursuits,” the University of Florida says. “Encouraging students to use their imagination can help them actively engage with new concepts and discover connections between ideas as well as provide advantages for their social and emotional well-being.”
What We’re Doing
At the Center for Creative Education, our mission is to transform teaching and learning through creativity and the arts. For 27 years, we have brought the arts into the classroom and integrated them into academic learning through afterschool, in-school, and in-house programs. In January 2020, we opened The Foundations School, an elementary school that allows us to take our experience and turn that into a full-day arts-integrated education for our students. And now, we are working towards opening a new campus that will allow us to expand our opportunities for arts education to the students we teach and the community at-large.
This week, we join UNESCO in celebrating the importance of arts education. We know that it has the power to change lives: we’ve witnessed it ourselves. We look forward to being an arts education resource in our community for years to come.