Abstract:
This presentation draws upon Appadurai's work on commodification and Foucault's theory of governmentality to critique arts and education partnerships aligned to the outcomes of a study into the NSW Fresh AIR Initiative (2014-2016) investigating three different Artists-in-Residence projects which utilised different models of residency over sustained partnerships. The study's aim was to investigate arts learning in schools when artists are in residence. Research questions focussed on the impacts on student learning, teachers' and artists' professional practice, school community development and success factors. A mixed method research methodology was employed to review the impact of three different residency models comprising fieldwork observations, focus group discussions, interviews, artefact analysis and pre- and post-surveys. Research participants included: artists-in-residence, teachers, students, parents, principals and school executive, arts organisations and NSW Department of Education Creative Arts Advisors. Some of the key study findings included: an improvement in the quality of arts education and arts curriculum provision; the development of schools as creative ecologies in the development of imagination, increased learner agency and community engagement; and the provision of artists' access to school contexts providing space to share their arts practice and art works with young people. These findings are analysed to understand if the products and impacts of these arts education partnerships are commodities regulated and interpreted by regimes of value (Appadurai, 1994) and the political needs of stakeholders. Recent arts education scholars have researched the many impacts of quality arts programs and partnerships in schools (Thomson, Hall & Russell, 2006; Hall & Thomson, 2017; Hunter, 2015). Whilst others have critiqued the commodification of the arts in education (Harris, 2014) against the broader backdrop of contemporary neoliberal agendas where the world is perceived as a vast supermarket and students are human capital (Apple, 2013), our critique highlights the politics of partner agency and a school's creative ecology in which organizational cultures determine dependency, collaboration and creativity. This critique situates the 'imagination-depleted diet' (Zhao, 2012) of young people within publicly funded Fresh AIR partnerships (Federal Government through the Australia Council and managed by Arts NSW) in a climate of underfunding and pervasive scrutiny.