Brisbane playwright, director and author David Burton lamented in Arts Hub earlier this month that staff redundancies and course closures are resulting in the significant structural changing of arts and humanities education in Australia.

“Qualified young professionals are disappearing from regional areas, high school students are disincentivised to prepare for creative tertiary study and university staff are burned out from fighting for a system that is hostile towards them,” Burton wrote.

Amelia Bird, executive officer at Art Education Victoria, says increasing obstacles being placed in front of young creatives are making it more difficult to pursue careers in the sector.

“They’re not having access to as many university courses, school creative programs are being underfunded and a lot of art teachers actually don’t have that security going forward knowing that they are going to have units to be able to teach or classes to have each semester,” she says.

In response, Art Education Victoria is heading for the hills – for the organisation’s first ever regional conference.

“One way that we can contribute is through education, professional development and obviously with regional areas, often the young people move out of those regional areas into the bigger cities, so this is one way that we can listen to our regional audiences and advocate for our teachers to then go back into the schools and advocate for young people, young creatives and arts programs,” Bird says.

Taking place in Ballarat on Friday, July 18, and with the theme, Inclusive Futures: Exploring Art and Innovation in the Visual Arts Classroom, the event will bring together educators, artists, and researchers to explore approaches for using high-tech and low-tech tools – including AI – in the visual arts classroom.

Designed to spark curiosity and hands-on experimentation, the conference will empower educators to reimagine how technology can co-exist with traditional art-making to support inclusive, engaging, and future-focused visual arts learning.

Designed to inspire curiosity and hands-on experimentation, the conference empowers educators to reimagine how technology and traditional art practices can work together to support inclusive, engaging, and future-focused visual arts learning. PHOTO: Belle Photography

While Victoria’s regional music fans might be cock-a-hoop about news that US legend Lenny Kravitz is bringing his world tour to Mildura, visual arts educators are entitled to feel equally chuffed.

“Towards the end of last year we started talking to Federation University, who also got us in contact with the Ballarat International Photobiennale and we started to talk about the changing landscape in education,” Bird explains.

The result is a day designed to spark curiosity and hands-on experimentation - a not-to-be-missed opportunity where the intersections of inclusivity, technology and creativity are explored.

A keynote session in the morning with renowned artist Kate Just will be followed by lively round-robin discussion tables, and later in the afternoon a series of superbly relevant workshops.

“While there is this push towards digital learning, technology and what this means for classrooms, we also really wanted to acknowledge that there is always going to be a place for traditional art making. We are very confident that that’s not going away,” Bird says.

“The conference not only looks at technology and AI and what that means for classrooms and art more broadly, but can we have a conversation around how does high tech and low tech art making coexist in the classroom? What does that relationship look like? Can they benefit each other in different ways?”

Just is renowned for her innovative use of craft and community engagement to address pressing social issues, including feminism, gender-based violence, reproductive freedom, war, racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, refugee and asylum seeker rights, and political protest.

“Having Kate as our keynote embodies the conference’s tone and theme from the outset,” Bird explains.

“She’s a low tech analog artist. She works with weaving and craft and community groups and it’s very participatory and labour intensive.

“It’s a slow process, and that, I guess, juxtaposes innovation where it’s fast, it’s solution-based. We’re thinking about the outcomes.”

Four workshops have so far been confirmed.

Visualising difference: Inclusive visual storytelling will involve artist, educator, and researcher Kim Percy, who’s currently doing her PhD in neurodivergency and art, exploring with delegates how both traditional and digital tools can empower students of all abilities and ensure equitable access to creative expression. It’s largely about using art play to help educators recognise and support neurodivergent traits in students, creating more inclusive and empathetic classrooms.

Stochastic parrots and reversible noise, is an AI art workshop with Warren Armstrong, a new media artist who works in the AI new media art space. Armstrong’s practice spans augmented and virtual reality, data visualisation/sonification, speculative fiction, and AI. His workshop will examine the ethical considerations of using AI and emerging technologies in schools, including privacy, academic integrity, and responsible practice that nurtures creativity and critical thinking.

“He’s great, and is going to be covering not just creating AI art, but also asking those questions around ethics and authorship and digital literacy and copyright in the arts as well, which is an issue a lot of art teachers are interested in,” Bird says.

“There’s so much conversation at the moment happening around AI, and we just want to make sure that our art teachers have access to information that’s relevant to them as well, and so they can actually understand it from an art teacher perspective.”

The third workshop is titled Centering The Artist and is presented by visual artist Annika Romeyn and spoken word artist Andrew Cox from the National Gallery of Australia.

More of a hands-on session, this one introduces a series of active learning strategies, such as writing, playing with materials, and embodied response, that move beyond discussion and verbal analysis.

The fourth workshop is titled Digital Screen Printing for Multidisciplinary Art Classrooms. This practical and playful workshop, led by artist and materials specialist Daniela Scaramuzzino, will allow delegates to get hands-on with the new Digital MiScreen Screen Maker and learn how to streamline screen printing by creating ready-to-use screens from digital images.

“I think the best way forward is to be able to educate the educators,” Bird says.

“Holding these conferences equips them with the knowledge to then make those informed decisions in their own classrooms and apply what they’ve learnt in their different contexts.

“We can’t know about what every teacher’s circumstances or their students are – so we just try to give them the best research and knowledge and skills that we can for them to then take away.”

ArtEdVic’s Re-assemble Art Education Conference, in partnership with FedUni and BIFB, is on Friday, July 18. For tickets and details, click here.