Welcome to the Learning Area: Arts & Culture

(Grades R - 9)

During 2005, Arts & Culture teachers in the Western Cape will be introduced to the Revised National Curriculum (RNCS) in the Senior Phase. Although the focus for this year's training will be on Grade 7 teaching, learning and assessment, the WCED overview manuals for the workshops cover Grades 8 and 9 as well. 

The discrete skills, knowledge, attitudes and values associated with the specialist subjects of Dance, Drama, Music and the Visual Arts are dealt with individually to assist teachers with identifying and preparing talented and interested learners for Grade 10 entry into one or more of the new Arts subjects offered in the FET band in the Learning Field of Arts and Culture.

Further information and details of the Arts and Culture Learning Programme exemplars will be available on this web site later this term.

The Arts offer a unique way of learning across the curriculum. Concepts can be learned vibrantly and experientially through the Arts. The link between experience, knowledge and understanding is constantly reinforced.

The approach in Arts & Culture reinforces a positive, affirming and encouraging teaching environment to build up learners' self confidence and self esteem, and to be culture-fair, gender-fair and anti bias. Learners and teachers must treat one another with support and respect e.g. not laughing at one another's efforts; avoiding sarcasm, irony or nasty remarks; acknowledging all cultures and learning to recognize and negotiate different understandings.

This Learning Area follows an integrated "minds on - hearts on - hands on" approach i.e. the cognitive, affective and the practical experiential aspects of learning are integrated.

Arts skills, knowledge and values are developed and built on through experience, practice and increasing maturity. Active learning is the basis for Arts and Culture learning throughout the year. In some art forms the body is the "instrument" e.g. dance, drama, singing and every lesson should begin with a warm up of the body and voice to prepare the "instrument" for work.

In addition. to get learners started on their creative journey, each should have a "visual diary" or journal or sketch book, file or storage container that can be used for exploring the "language of the arts",  planning, storing found objects from the natural and the built environment, building up a personal "reference library" of photocopied and/ or photographed images that relate to the arts, recording ideas in writing, sketch plans or notation, cutting and pasting scraps or swatches of fabrics for colours and textures, observational and/ or expressive drawings, mind maps, collages, designs for choregraphy or a drama performance or for music etc. This is the learner's own resource book or file that contains qualitative evidence of her or his personal development in the different art forms throught the year.

Every learner is innately creative. The task of the Arts and Culture educator is to draw out and develop this creativity in diverse ways to ensure the development of innovative, resourceful, confident, self-disciplined, sensitive and literate citizens for the 21st century.