Mind + Media + Heritage

From a global perspective, there have been growing moves to place arts education at the heart of school education in the 21st century. At the UNESCO General Conference in 2006, an appeal for the promotion of arts education was launched, which proposed to make arts education that includes poetry, art, music, drama, dance and cinema mandatory in school education. In line with such moves, many countries　are working to implement educational reform with the recognition that arts education is essential for fostering creativity.

The arts-related environment surrounding children has been extremely diversified and has become increasingly borderless. Combined sensuous media arts have also become commonplace. In consideration of education for children who are exposed to such visual culture, will we be able to deal with the situation only by providing traditional curriculum for the visual arts? Arts education may be reviewed, bringing comprehensive media arts including screen image and drama and physical arts into the main stream. Some point out that the idea of music education or education of art itself is a thing of the past. We need to think about the possibility of widening the concept of arts education that centers on creativity and imagination.

It is important to respect artistic values and deepen understanding in arts and culture by expressing oneself and actually see and feel a wide variety of arts and culture also in the sense of the creation of children's own arts and culture. We need to reconsider the significant effects of children's imagination on the development of their cognitive abilities and redesign the learning environment that is more flexible and full of creativity.

However, in reality, as more importance has been placed on basic learning ability in recent years, it has become difficult to guarantee the opportunity of arts education. We wonder whether it is proper to deprive children of their opportunities to see and feel arts. Although the expectation for the role of arts education or the significance of the subjects have not lessened, it is true that there has been a concern over the effective aspect of the values.

In recognition that an increasing number of children are not able to receive school education and are deprived of opportunities to enjoy art in some parts of the world due to recent terrorism and various conflicts, we need not only to publicize the social educational and communicative capabilities of art in each country but also to seek ways for researchers of art education and art educators in each country to unite their power and act as bridges for deepening the understanding in various cultures through international exchanges to contribute to world peace. We believe that a most important mission of this conference is, in addition to exchanges at the academic level, to materialize practical exchanges in school education and review the meaning of international exchanges.