The arts within a sustainable educational agenda

Engagement in the arts has a wide range of benefits for students and educators. Despite such recognition of value, the journey of arts education and its sustainability in formal educational settings such as schools and tertiary institutions has been ubiquitously turbulent as a result of constant changes. Education is strongly influenced by the social, political and economic contexts in which it takes place. This paper explores the place of the Arts in education and focuses on the provision of arts education in Australia. The arts are an acknowledged key learning area of the Australian curriculum however the Australian educators and researchers claim that providing an in-depth, meaningful engagement is unrealistic with the current situation. The authors suggest that policy makers, curriculum developers, researchers, teacher educators, arts educators and educational institutions focus on implementing arts education effectively in formal educational settings and sustain arts education for twenty-first century learners in Australia and beyond.