21st Century Vision

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Academy beliefs - Developing the individual

For a young person to thrive in the 21st century and to achieve well being, we believe that a young person needs to develop skill and capabilities to realise 10 interrelated educational outcomes.*

  • Embracing a personal value system compatible to 21st century realities. This paradigm, called "Planetism", will determine the nature of future markets, industries and ethics.
  • Being a leader of self and others: shaping one's own life, career and well-being. Being a path maker rather than a path taker.
  • Developing a successful career path which comprises job making rather than job taking. This involves passion, insight, foresight and hindsight.
  • Being a life long, learning driven and just in time learner, adapting easily to change and seeing learning as an essential part of life.
  • Being an enterprising innovative person who continuously develops one's own creativity and enterprise and respecting it in others.
  • Becoming a successful 21st century adult. This includes initiating successful interdependent relationships and participating in communities.
  • Being aware, respectful, tolerant and supportive of intercultural and religious diversity. This includes understanding other cultures, including languages.
  • Understanding that 21st century economic success will be based on the core forms of human creativity: the arts and humanities, the social and natural sciences and the technologies.
  • Comprehending that 21st century success requires that individual rights be balanced with responsibilities to others, to the community, the environment, and the planet and future generations.
  • Knowing the implications of, and the opportunities offered by, the creation of a 21st century society that has sustainable development, consumption, production and lifestyles.

Ellyard, P.Preparing the next Generation for 21st Century Success. Melbourne. 11/09/2006

Why creative industries?

Creativity – "the ability to create meaningful new forms" is more a decisive force of competitive advantage. In virtually every industry from cars to fashion, food products, and information technology itself, the winners in the long run are those who can create and keep creating ( Florida, R. Rise of the Creative Class, 2003).

"If services and human capital are in the focus of future economies (rather than natural resources and land values), then creativity and innovation and core assets, and education, lifestyle amenities and the arts become essential founding investments in that future capital stock."

Competitive advantages in the marketplace have always come from "better recipes not just cooking".

Creative industries use creativity for commercial outcomes. It is about facilitating the creation of flexible careers that meld creative skills with the requirements of business and industry.

Creative Industries sectors include:

  • Film, Television and Entertainment Software
  • Writing, Publishing and Print Media
  • Music Composition and Production
  • Architecture, Visual Arts and Design
  • Advertising, Graphic Design and Marketing
  • Performing Arts

The Shared Space

Together, the arts and education sectors form a powerful catalyst for the new ways of seeing, knowing, doing and being that underpin life in the 21st century.

A Smart State demands creativity in all aspects of life - social, economic, aesthetic, technological and cultural. The Smart State is a place where imagination is valued. Smart State citizens respect different cultural practices and values and can celebrate them in productive ways.

We want to nurture the next generation of creative entrepreneurs and cultural citizens to push the boundaries of excellence in the arts and build social cohesion in our global and multicultural society.

There are also significant benefits derived from the "shared space" for the education sector and the arts sector. Arts-rich learning environments deliver higher results in arts education and across the curriculum, and they motivate students to learn and increase their participation in their school community. Arts-rich learning environments deliver opportunities for artists to be seen and heard and to reap economic benefit from being creative and working with young people.

To fully realise the contribution that the arts and education can make to the Smart State and to our schools and artists, there must be a shared vision and aligned action. Schools must be drawn into the wider arts and cultural community and into creative industries, and the arts and cultural community and creative industries drawn into schools. The community creates performing and other arts opportunities for students and teachers, and the fabric of the community becomes seamlessly interwoven with that of the school. The challenge is to identify and foster the necessary conditions for these dynamic arts and education partnerships in Queensland.

Planetism and Creativity: Personal value systems as a way of developing human sustainability in education through the arts

Imagining the voyage

"If we want to create an outstanding education system we must imagine it first. We cannot work to create a future which we do not first imagine." – Peter Ellyard, 2004

The Queensland Academy for Creative Industries (QACI) is a new educational initiative imagined and administered by Education Queensland. It is a selective Academy, positioning the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program within the context of the Creative Industries and the Queensland University of Technology.

We position contemporary research into creativity as a key driver in educational reform, within the conceptual and operational frameworks of the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries . The Academy vision "To be the world-class learning environment of choice for the inspirational creative generation" is drawn from research by Richard Florida, whose notions of talent, technology and tolerance inform the synergies of ethical pathmakers, supported by the research of the Australian futurist Peter Ellyard.

Imagine a voyage of venturers sharing connected visions, values and virtues travelling in the same vehicle. Peter Ellyard encourages us to imagine students embracing a personal value system compatible with 21 st century realities of future markets, industries and ethics. Imagine teachers informing curricular responses through the arts to global issues of sustainability: economy, technological change and cultural innovation.

Similarly, the work of Sir Ken Robinson (pdf 151kb), who positions creativity as another form of literacy and numeracy, informs our commitment to empowering student voices of inquiry, critical thinking, responsible citizenship and positive innovation at the Queensland Academy of Creative Industries.