Call for conference contributions | Baltic x Northumbria University

Have Some Imagination: Towards a Manifesto for Arts Education

Have Some Imagination: Towards a manifesto for arts education will be a free, international conference addressing the transformational value of creative learning for envisioning and sustaining collective futures. It is being organised by the Baltic x Northumbria University Institute and will be held at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK on Friday 7th & Saturday 8th February 2025.

As a result of educational policy changes and the impact of austerity on arts spending over recent decades, the delivery of arts education in schools, colleges, and universities has been pitched into an unprecedented crisis. Across geo-political contexts, a narrowly financialised discourse of the arts has come to predominate in public culture, often making arts education seem unworthy when contrasted with disciplines with supposedly better monetised outcomes and job prospects

How else might we assess the value of an arts education? How important, even transformative, are the imaginative, world-making capacities of creative learning for society, the planet, the economy? And how should a changed understanding of what or who we think art education is for affect the way in which it should be delivered?

Have Some Imagination will bring together academics, schoolteachers, artists, community activists, students, policy makers and leaders of the creative industries to address present-day challenges. Activities will involve talks, workshops, keynote lectures, and a collective envisioning project to strategise for an arts education of tomorrow.