Arts in schools as a change model: education for the arts and aesthetic experience

There now seems to be a broad consensus on the importance of arts in academic and extraacademic education and, more largely, on the legitimacy of education for the arts for all. The educational virtues of art are recognised at global level as testified by UNESCO’s symposia in Hong Kong in 2004, in Lisbon in 2006, then in South Korea in 2010, or the European and international symposium at the Paris-located Georges Pompidou Centre in January 2007. An artistic and aesthetic principle is gaining ground in the definition of the educational good. In France it emerged slowly in the 1970s and expanded in the 1990s when arts education policies were implemented. Although the place of art and artistic practices in the educational field remain insufficient, they have undeniably kept growing for the past thirty years. It is not only within school systems that art seems to be a solution, even an educational model, but also within the whole society – hospitals, firms, prisons, welfare centres, etc. – and it is expected to contribute to fostering social cohesion and balancing social and individual interests.