THE IMPORTANCE OF ARTS EDUCATION IN THE GULF REGION AND SOUTH EAST ASIA

Art education has a purpose to serve and without a structured, monitored curriculum that is implemented across the board it can be argued that students enrolling in higher education especially in Arts and Design could be better served if they were introduced to it earlier in their education. The FORD FOUNDATION in 2004 launched a National Arts Education Initiative to address issues of equity and access in arts education in the United States. This abstract is a proposal to initiate a social awareness campaign to ignite the call “Arts Education for All” in the Middle-East Gulf Region and in South East Asia. The FORD model is one of many that I am in the process of studying and will analyze from a pragmatic point of view the strategies that could perhaps be implemented in the region I practice in.

In my experience when following Socially Responsive Communication model it is imperative that there is a message conveyed to the public that could make an impact and the “will” of the people would bring the change needed. Innovative strategies have to be implemented based on economies of reality and priorities within each region, country, culture, tribe and even how the gender issue could play a vital role in issue of equity and access to arts education. By no mean I feel that it is going to be a single solution that could be implemented across the board but would at this point in my very preliminary fact-finding and research stage something that needs to be modular as in ‘units’ that could be structured around learning communities.

Richard Grefé is the executive director of AIGA, the professional association for design in America of which I am also a member of — and in his call to designers in an article written in 2009 titled What Can Designers do Collectively to Advance Social Causes he declares that : “AIGA in partnership with UNICEF and INDEX a Danish-based, non-profit organization next challenge is likely to revolve around education issues in the third world; schools will be encouraged to create teams of students from design, business, engineering and sciences to tackle the problems, with the intent that the solutions will be sustainable in business terms as well as humanitarian dimensions.” It is a known fact that AIGA has always encouraged designers to work on social causes and issues that can promote to a wider audience an understanding of the potential design can play in identifying and solving complex, universal problems through collaborations.

I have received a copy of the ART EDUCATION in INDIA COUNTRY REPORT (2010) Prepared by: Department of Education in Arts & Aesthetics National Council of Educational Research and Training. It is perhaps the most comprehensive study done on Arts since Charles and Ray Eames The India Report published in 1958 for the National Institute of Design (NID), which was on Design but deeply rooted in arts and crafts. The 2010 India Report has a vision and a mandate it follows the UNESCO- Road Map (2006-2010) and studies the Indian perspective of Art as curricular and compulsory subject in school education from an ‘Indian Perspective’ both in Historical and Policy Perspective. The report shares success stories (case studies) from the field and it is remarkable to know that it is the eleventh cycle of a five-year plan. It sums up with the words of Tagore, “Art is the response of an individual’s creative soul to the call of the real”.