Rita L. Irwin Dear Arts Educators, If you have received this message already, please forgive the duplicate mailing. We are writing to ask you to take a moment and write to your National Commission for UNESCO. We need to raise the status of creativity and arts education within UNESCO’s budget priorities so that UNESCO staff can continue to promote our work around the world. In July of this year, the Executive Board of UNESCO adopted priority rankings for its five major programmes along with a recommendation that the lowest priorities be considered for elimination. Within these rankings, the cultural programme was accorded a proportionately low number of A and B level ratings and the creativity program (within which arts education is accommodated) was effectively ranked 48 out of 48 priorities overall. This means that it is at risk of elimination. If these rankings remain unchanged when the General Conference meets in November, the result could be that no staff member within UNESCO would be permitted to spend time on the creativity file, including arts education. There would be no further work done in UNESCO on the Third World Conference, on the International Arts Education week or on any other project related to arts education. I believe that this would be a terrible step backward in our efforts to promote the benefits of arts education within our individual countries and internationally. It is not too late to modify the priority rankings. When the Member States meet at the November General Conference, they will be the ultimate decision makers. The voting delegates at the General Conference will be representing each of our countries. If we can convince our national delegations that creativity should be accorded a higher ranking, we can forestall the elimination of arts education from the UNESCO cultural programme. As a network of arts educators from nations around the world committed to promoting arts education, it is up to us to collectively work to convince our voting delegates to support the creativity program. What can we do? Because decisions at the General Conference will be taken by the Member States, it appears unlikely that an appeal to UNESCO staff members will yield the desired results. What we can do is to contact the National Commissions of UNESCO in our own countries to express our concern about the future of creativity as a priority within UNESCO programming , to seek their advice and to solicit their cooperation. We can give reasons why creativity is so urgently needed to promote economic and cultural development and to generate solutions to the many challenges facing the world today. UNESCO has been an active supporter of arts education since its inception and most particularly in the years following Director General Federico Mayor’s 1999 appeal to Member States asking them to introduce arts into their school curricula as a means to promote creativity. Since then, UNESCO has organized several international meetings including two World Conferences in arts education. It has published the Road Map for Arts Education (2006) and formally endorsed the Seoul Agenda: Goals for the development of arts education (2010). In 2011, the General Council of UNESCO announced the International Arts Education Week as a vehicle for advancing the goals of the Seoul Agenda. It also called for a third World Conference to be held in the near future. All of this progress is currently in jeopardy as a result of projected cuts in UNESCO’s budget. The International Network for Research in Arts Education (INRAE) and the World Alliance for Arts Education (WAAE) suggest that we make use of the wording of the Road Map for Arts Education and the Seoul Agenda when composing our messages to the National Commissions. The Seoul Agenda can be found on the UNESCO website via the following link.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/CLT/pdf/Seoul_Agenda_EN.pdf The Road Map for Arts Education can be found via this link. unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/CLT/pdf/Arts_Edu_RoadMap_en.pdf A list of National Commissions, including the names and contact information of current Presidents/Chairs and Secretary-Generals can be found at the following site. unesco.org/nac/index.php?lc=E&module=national_commissions&showall=1 The creativity priority within the ranking developed by the Executive Committee is expressed as follows: “International and regional cooperation strengthened through knowledge sharing and operational partnerships in the field of creativity “. This is the priority within which arts education is located as part of the UNESCO operational structure. You may find it useful to use this wording when explaining the priority you wish to support. We encourage each of you to reach out to your own National Commission in the very near future - seeking their support and advice in this critical situation. Members of INRAE and WAAE believe it would be helpful if you would share this information with your own networks and organizations. With best wishes, Larry O’Farrell Chair, INRAE Margaret Barrett Chair, WAAE Rita Irwin President, InSEA unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/CLT/pdf/Seoul_Agenda_EN.pdf unesco.org
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 19:12:11 +0000
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