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Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton TD, today (Wednesday, 8 March) launched the Teacher-Artist Partnership Research Report ‘Exploring teacher-artist partnership as a model of CPD for supporting and enhancing arts education in Ireland’.

Arts education enables children to explore alternative ways of communicating with others, encouraging ideas that are personal and inventive and making a vital contribution to the development of a range of intelligences. Arts education is integral in helping to promote thinking, imagination and sensitivity, and arts related activities help children to make sense of the world; to question, to speculate and to find solutions; to deal with feelings and to respond to creative experiences.

The Exploring Teacher- Artist Partnership Model began in September 2013, it is a Department of Education and Skills led (via ATECI) teacher-artist partnership initiative in primary schools delivered in partnership with the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (DAHRRGA).

The research report, an education led response to the 2013 Arts in Education Charter, provides evidence-based recommendations to foster and develop teacher-artist partnerships in innovative ways. The report authors, Dr. Kenny and Dr. Morrissey, highlight the complementary knowledge and skills that both teachers and artists bring to arts education in schools.

Minister Bruton congratulated Dr. Kenny and Dr. Morrissey on an excellent evidence-informed research report, and thanked Professor Coolahan (Chair of the Arts Charter Implementation Group) and all those involved in the Teacher-Artist Partnership initiative, saying: “I am delighted that the initiative has continued and is now at a stage where it will be delivered as a Summer Course in each of the 21 Education Centres in summer 2017. I wish the overall initiative continued success and I am now delighted to formally launch the research report”.

Minister Bruton said: “This research which has been carried out will be of tremendous value in informing this emerging area of policy and practice in Ireland in the area of arts education. I believe this model of teacher professional development has enormous potential to transform approaches to arts education in schools. In particular, it highlights the importance of supporting arts and education partnerships through professional development so as to create high quality arts experiences for children. Later this year we will launch the implementation plan for arts in education is a priority. The plan – “Creative Children” –has a key objective that by 2022 every child in Ireland will have access to tuition and participation in other art forms such as art, music, drama and coding. My Department will be a key partner in implementing this objective”.

Commenting on the launch Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Heather Humphreys T.D. said: “Creative Ireland is an invitation to the entire country to get involved in something truly inspirational. This hugely ambitious all-of-Government initiative puts culture and creativity at the centre of public policy. Creative Ireland will ensure that children can participate in the arts from an early age, and it will drive cultural engagement in every county nationwide. This is a bold and ambitious initiative, and it is particularly appropriate and significant that our priority in this first year of Creative Ireland is children and young people”.

“We already know that children who engage in the arts are happier and they perform better at school. I welcome the findings of this Research Report on the Teacher-Artist Partnership model and look forward to working with our colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills and the Arts Council of Ireland, both of whom have been instrumental in bringing this piece of work to fruition, on developing the Creative Children plan. This report provides very valuable insights into the importance of this approach to creative learning and contributes to the strong foundations upon which the Creative Ireland Programme is built.”


Note for Editors

A copy of the report is available at:

https://www.education.ie/en/Publications/Education Reports/pub_ed_exploring_teacher_artist_partnership_cpd_2017.pdf