Tertiary arts does not operate in a vacuum. As tertiary education helps to shape the professional landscape in which our students will work, tertiary education is itself shaped by the perspectives and experiences that our students bring from their primary and secondary education.
At the other end of this educational pathway, our research and teaching connects with industry in our professional arts and creative worlds.
Within academia itself, creative disciplines intersect with the variety of other disciplines that inhabit academia providing staff and students alike with a wider educational community that complements our identity within the art world and creative sector.
In this edition of NiTRO, we add to the exploration of the future of arts and cultural policy featured in our previous edition to encompass perspectives of the bigger picture for arts, culture and education policy and its connection across the broad education landscape.
QUT Vice Chancellor Margaret Sheil AO reminds us that strength comes by combining with others – in arts and in other university disciplines.
Margaret Baguley, President of Art Education Australia, and John O’Toole AM, lead writer for the National Curriculum for the Arts, both discuss the National Curriculum for the Arts, unpacking how it has progressed and suggesting future actions and direction.
James Verdon, Bettina Frankham and Kath Dooley, representing the Executive of the Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association (ASPERA), highlight the role that screen production, and ASPERA as its peak body, plays in future societal improvement.
In this edition we also launch a new section on news from our local community. Unsurprisingly, for the first edition of the year, much of the news reports changes in institutional staffing as colleagues move to new appointments in the sector.
We hope that this update on what is going on in tertiary arts will remain a feature of NiTRO, and we invite our institutions and organisations to contact us with news of events, activities, job opportunities, appointments, graduate successes and other news of interest across the sector.