Meeting the Demands for Social Justice through Visual Arts in the Curriculum

Ten years have passed since the first meetings of Arts advisors to start identifying the priorities and approaches that the Arts may take when formalised into a national curriculum structure. Now the time has come for reviewing the past to inform the future. Now is the time for reviewing, interrogating and challenging the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts" for a socially just world. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the process of positioning Visual Arts in the curriculum and the role of Visual Arts to meet social justice imperatives. The paper presents a critical discussion of the Arts and a critical consideration of my role in the writing of the shaping papers. This approach allows an identification of some highlights and challenges along the way. The more philosophical part of the discussion addresses the politics of curriculum and the politics of knowledge through Visual Arts, as it situates the underpinning principles of aesthetics and meaning-making through the Arts. The paper shows how acts of hospitality disrupt practices of domination and marginalisation; and how such acts activate ethical practices of social justice in the Arts, and Visual Arts in particular. The paper claims that Visual Arts as a learning area has a potent role in reflecting and shaping attitudes to social justice, and that education in Visual Arts may contribute to authenticating and legitimising one's place in the world based upon credible ethical foundations.