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1. Special Issue: Arts and Culture in Education:
Questioning and Reimagining Current Practices
Arts and Culture in Education
Eeva Anttila (Guest editor)
University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland
Rose Martin (Guest editor)
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Welcome to the special issue of Policy Futures in Education, entitled ‘Arts and Culture in
Education: Questioning and Reimagining Current Practices’. We are excited to share with
you this unique collection of articles that explore topics connected to politics, community,
inclusion and interdisciplinarity, within policy and practice in arts and cultural education.
As the title implies, this special issue revolves around arts and cultural education. We editors
observe that as the world becomes more and more globalized, and social issues reside at the
forefront of governments’ agendas, there is a need to explore diverse ways in which change and
action might occur. As troublesome political and social events unfold around the globe, the
ricochet effect of these on policies, practices and pedagogies associated with arts and culture is
inevitable. Such events will have a lasting impact on the future of arts education, and inevitably
challenge those who seek to broaden meanings of socially, culturally, economically and polit-
ically inclusive arts practices and policies in a range of communities.
We also wanted to tackle the question of cultural rights of specific groups whose voices are
not always heard, such as minority and indigenous groups, children and youth at risk, gender
diverse, elderly, mixed ability and LGBTQþ. Thus, in the call for papers, we identified several
questions that focused on minorities and marginalization. We asked, for example, whose voices
dominate and/or are missing within existing arts education policy and practice, and how are
societal crises and conflicts reflected in policies regarding arts and cultural education? We are
pleased to see that these questions concern many arts education scholars around the globe, and
that we can present some of this important work in this special issue.
The articles included in this volume come from a range of cultural contexts and educa-
tional environments. The research shared adds to conversations in the realms of policy and
practice. The authors contributing to this special issue seek to sustain dialogue that shares a
diversity of perspectives and the on-going critical questioning of the role arts education
might play in relation to policy, practice, community, and social transformation.
Corresponding author:
Rose Martin, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Email: rose.martin@auckland.ac.nz
Policy Futures in Education
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DOI: 10.1177/1478210319877019
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2. In her article entitled ‘Countering Hate Speech through Arts Education: Addressing
Intersections and Policy Implications’, Tuula J€
a€
askel€
ainen addresses a disturbing and esca-
lating phenomenon that has the capacity to increase hatred against a person or people
because of a characteristic they share, or a group to which they belong. She points out
that for maintaining democracy, it is important to identify the balance between freedom of
expression and protecting other human rights. J€
a€
askel€
ainen illuminates how art and arts
education can challenge hate speech through creating counter narratives. She concludes that
the impact of intervention strategies in countering hate speech through arts education is
promising but warrants more research.
The notion of politics and difference is a theme that is then extended in the article
‘Centralizing Queer in Finnish Art Education’, by Anniina Suominen, Tiina Pusa, Aapo
Raudaskoski and Larissa Haggren. This article resonates with the theme of marginalized
voices noted within J€
a€
askel€
ainen’s article, as Suominen, Pusa, Raudaskoski and Haggren inves-
tigate relations between policy and practice in relation to the Finnish National Core Curriculum
for basic education for visual arts as it relates to the broader Finnish culture of power and
politics. These authors specifically examine if and how gender diversity and queer are present in
the policies guiding Finnish art education and how these texts might influence praxis.
The notion of social transformation is identified in the article by Serenity Wise, Ralph Buck,
Rose Martin and Longqi Yu, titled ‘Community Dance as a Democratic Dialogue’. This article
explores the ways in which community dance could have democratizing effects on its partic-
ipants, encouraging people to actively create inclusive, participatory and empowering spaces.
The authors pose the questions: how might community dance have a role to play within
fostering democratic values in our world? And how do the rhetoric and politics of various
values, along with equality of these values, operate in various community dance contexts?
Similarly, the notion of inclusion and participation is identified as key in the article
‘Disabilities within Sweden’s Art and Music Schools: Discourses of Inclusion, Policy and
Practice’ by Adriana Di Lorenzo Tillborg, who asks the question: how are art and music
school practice, policy and inclusion of pupils with mixed abilities connected within and
through leaders’ discursive practices? Gathering data from focus group conversations with
art and music school leaders in Sweden, Tillborg’s findings illuminate that there are tensions
between multicentric inclusion discourse versus normality discourse as well as between
multicentric inclusion discourse versus specialization discourse.
A critical questioning of policy is further explored in Charlotte Svendler Nielsen and Liesl
Hartman’s article, ‘Advancing Our Futures: Educational Potential of Interdisciplinary
Artistic Projects to Children “At-Risk” in Denmark and South Africa’. Svendler Nielsen
and Hartman look at how arts education policies, with specific attention on UNESCO’s
Seoul Agenda for Arts Education, can be enacted within schools in both Denmark and
South Africa. Drawing on a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology, Svendler Nielsen
and Hartman focus on what importance arts education might have in such contexts,
especially to children considered to be ‘at-risk’ within their respective environments.
UNESCO’s policies are also the focus of Nicholas Rowe’s article, ‘From Global Policy to
Tertiary Pedagogy: Transformational Thresholds for Creative Arts Degrees’. Rowe draws
on three UNESCO strategic documents associated with arts education, and connects these
to Threshold Concept theory as a means of framing learning challenges, and in turn to
highlight the professional development needs of designers of tertiary curricula. Within his
article, Rowe critically reflects his own experiences of co-designing tertiary degree
programmes in New Zealand, China and Fiji. From this reflection there are key conceptual
2 Policy Futures in Education 0(0)

3. thresholds Rowe identifies that can challenge tertiary educators when seeking to align
institutional teaching practices with contemporary global policies on arts education.
With the UNESCO Seoul Agenda (2010) calling for ‘a concerted effort to realize the full
potential of high quality arts education to positively renew educational systems, to achieve
crucial social and cultural objectives, and ultimately to benefit children, youth and life-long
learners of all ages’ (2), this special issue seeks to present current research on the practice
policy gap and inequality in terms of access to arts and culture. We hope that this volume
can offer a rich insight to contemporary considerations of policy and practice in arts and
cultural education.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of
this article.
References
UNESCO (2010) Seoul Agenda: Goals for the Development of Arts Education. Available at: http://
www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/CLT/pdf/Seoul_Agenda_EN.pdf
(accessed 24 August 2019).
Eeva Anttila, is Professor of dance pedagogy at Theatre Academy of University of the Arts
Helsinki, Finland, and leads the MA program for dance pedagogy. Her research interests
include dialogical and critical dance pedagogy, embodied learning, embodied knowledge
and practice-based/artistic research methods. Eeva served as the Chair of Dance and the
Child International (2009–2012), and has published several articles and book chapters
nationally and internationally. Eeva is Co-Editor of the International Journal of
Education in the Arts and a member of the editorial board of the Nordic Journal of
Dance: Practice, Education and Research. Currently, she is involved in the
ARTSEQUAL research project (see artsequal.fi).
Rose Martin, is Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Auckland. From
January 2020 she will be Associate Professor of Arts Education with a focus on
Multiculturalism at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research
interests include dance education; dance ethnography; dance in post-colonial contexts;
and dance and politics. Rose is the author of the books Talking dance: Contemporary
histories from the Southern Mediterranean (2014) with Associate Professor Nicholas
Rowe and Associate Professor Ralph Buck, Dance, diversity and difference: Performance
and identity politics in Northern Europe and the Baltics (2017) with Professor Eeva Anttila,
and Women, dance and revolution: Performance and protest in the Southern Mediterranean
(2016). Rose is also involved in the ARTSEQUAL research project (see artsequal.fi).
Anttila and Martin 3