Call to Action on Arts Education

COVID-19 has devastated the arts and learning sector, threatening to push the arts completely out of post-pandemic school programming while limiting the impact of the sector on broader community revival. We are seeking endorsements for our Call to Action on Arts Education to help in our advocacy efforts as we seek to sustain and grow arts and learning in an emerging new normal. By adding your name, you will make a bold statement that arts and creativity are integral to the learning process, both at school and throughout life, and are fundamental to the development of the fully realized individual.

Call to Action on Arts Education - The Winnipeg Vision

The Canadian Network for Arts & Learning calls on governments, artists, educators, professional organizations, researchers, universities, communities, and all advocates of arts and learning to endorse the following principles to ensure that the arts are positioned to make an increased and sustainable contribution to learning both at school and throughout our communities.

The vision is the outcome of a major conference (Creative Convergence) held in Winnipeg, Manitoba in October of 2019 during which participating experts from across Canada and around the globe were asked to share their perspectives on the future of the sector. Their responses highlighted how the three goals of the Seoul Agenda, Goals for the development of arts education (UNESCO 2010) can be interpreted from the perspective of practitioners and learners.

We envision a sustainable future for arts and learning in which learners of all ages:

  1. Have Access

    • Access diverse and inclusive learning experiences in, through and about the arts via
      • Opportunities within the home, community, learning institutions, and workplace
      • Recognition and celebration of diverse artistic traditions and expressions
      • Digitally mediated and face-to-face engagement
      • Overcoming social, economic, geographic, and cultural barriers

  2. Experience Quality

    • Experience quality arts education via
      • Progressive development of artistic knowledge and techniques
      • Self-expression and human interaction
      • Responding to works of arts from diverse cultures and traditions
      • Balancing the potential and risks of technologically-mediated arts practice and learning
      • Moments of contemplation, curiosity, wonder, joy and delight

  3. Apply the Arts

    • Apply the arts to issues of personal, local, and global significance via
      • connecting to self, others and community
      • Building understanding, reconciling difference and mobilizing change
      • Supporting civic engagement and social good
      • Contributing to personal and community health and well being
      • Activating artistic ways of knowing within non-arts sectors

Our call to action is issued in sympathy with the provisions of the Frankfurt Declaration for Arts Education (World Alliance for Arts Education, November 2019) and is closely aligned with several of the goals and targets of UNESCO's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UNESCO 2015).

View the Call to Action as a PDF

Add your endorsement to the Call to Action on Arts Education

Recent Endorsements

Suzanne Hermary

I am endorsing because I know the importance of the arts to my experience and education and to imagine its loss is devastating.

Geneviève Mercure

Je signe parce que L’éducation artistique est essentielle dans une société

Jean Assamoa

Je signe parce que Je suis un Artist Educateur dans les Ecoles, Presentateur et performer. Je suis aussi le Fondateur et Directeur artistique d' Akwaba Cultural Exchange.

New Brunswick Choral Federation

I am endorsing because the pandemic has revealed both how dependent we all are on art and artists, and how vulnerable the sector is. We continue to face rapid growth in the communications and media sector, revolutionary practices in business and technology, and amazing discoveries in the practical and applied sciences. Education policies and practices must reflect the ever-increasing demand for a new kind of creative workforce, and quality education in the arts is an indispensable element of that.

Plein sud, centre d‘exposition en art actuel à Longueuil

Heather Martens Rempel

I am endorsing because while I was always aware of how important the arts are, the pandemic has made it even more obvious. It contributes to mental well being and helps to support resilience. With budgets going into deficits it would so easy to cut arts' supports. In the short and long term this would contribute to higher costs in many other ways. Supporting the arts is crucial to building community and a healthy society.