In early 2024, Creative Australia commissioned Sue Giles AM and Simon Abrahams to undertake a children, young people and the arts analysis and strategic advice report, drawing on deliberately targeted consultation. The resulting detailed report provided useful intelligence and recommendations for Creative Australia to consider and will continue to inform and support the agency’s ongoing work and future planning in this area.
Sue Giles and Simon Abrahams’ report also pulled together a selection of research resources, organised under the following themes that explore the value of creative activity for children and young people:
- how children and young people value the arts
- building civic capacity and cultural citizenship
- impact on health and wellbeing
- benefits to society
- impact on learning
- artistic value
- economic impact.
These themes and related research, prepared by Dr Jennifer Andersen, are published here as Next Generation Now: Benefits of the arts for children and young people – A discussion of selected research.
We hope that this collection of related publications proves useful for practitioners, researchers, policy-workers, and others engaged in advocacy for children, young people and the arts. We note that this collection is not exhaustive but rather provides research context for work in this field.
Children, young people and their engagement and access to arts and creativity remains an important focus area for Creative Australia. We are currently commencing a significant piece of research to understand how children aged 2 to 15 engage with arts and creativity, including Australian stories, art, music and performance.
This research will explore how Australian children engage with arts and creativity, including their specific motivations, barriers, and attitudes. This will complement existing data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on children’s participation in and attendance at selected cultural and creative activities.
Image credit: Nicola Gunn, Working with Children. Supplied.
