Phl achieves UNESCO's aim

 The following is UNESCO’s official announcement for International Arts Education Week.

Following the success of the 2nd World Conference on Arts Education (25-28 May 2010, Seoul), the 4th week of May has been proclaimed as International Arts Education Week by UNESCO’s General Conference at its 36th session presided by UNESCO Director General, Dr. Irina Bokova. The main is to increase the international community’s awareness of the importance of arts education by showcasing concrete arts education projects and practices and reinforcing cooperation with main stakeholders of arts education.

The first edition celebration will be at the UNESCO Headquarters on 23 May 2012 with various activities co-organized by UNESCO and Korea centering on the “Implementation of the Seoul Agenda”, outcome of the 2nd World Conference, and “Cultural Diversity in and through Arts Education”.

In the Philippines it commenced on May 22 with an interactive South-South Forum on twinning cultural diversity with bio-diversity protection within and through Arts Education. The event is designed to raise awareness and pursue commitment to the Seoul Arts Education Agenda building on the UNESCO Road Map for Arts Education “calling upon all. UNESCO Member States, civil society, professional organizations and communities to recognize its governing goals, to employ the proposed strategies, and to implement the action items in a concerted effort to realize the full potential of high quality arts education to positively renew educational systems, to achieve crucial social and cultural objectives, and ultimately to benefit children, youth and life-long learners of all ages.”

Philippine partners are the Ed-Cabinet Cluster composed of DepEd, CHED and TESDA, with NCCA, the Cabinet Cluster on Environment and Climate Change led by DENR and the Legislative Committees on Education and Culture, Foreign Relations and Environment; the Int’l-Theatre Institute (ITI) Earthsavers UNESCO DREAM Center serves as coordinating Secretariat to realize the event. Cecile G. Alvarez Director of Earthsavers UNESCO DREAM Center presented a paradigm in special Arts Education at the 1st UNESCO World Arts Education in Portugal in 2006. The Philippine proposal was reiterated in Seoul at the Ministerial round table meeting where the Korean gov’t after approval of the Seoul Agenda adopted the Philippine request for an International Arts Education Week as the main sponsor of the resolution in Paris to continue interest, attention and action on the Seoul Agenda in a sustained basis in between the quadrianale held World Arts Education Conference.

The following memorandum is from Cecile Guidote Alvarez, Director, Earthsavers/UNESCO DREAM Center, and President, Phl Center International Theater Institute.

We applaud the general conference under the leadership of Dr. Irina Bokova for the UNESCO proclamation of an International Arts Education Week. This historic gesture will globally animate, strengthen and link efforts to acknowledge and dynamically apply heritage, history-creative industry based arts education as a force for healing and values formation for social transformation towards peace and sustainable development.

In the Philippines, we commenced the celebration with a bio-cultural diversity dialogue on the 21st connected in a south-south cultural intercourse with Latin America through Colombia and Africa via Kenya to provide a tri-continental panorama of our commitment in pursuing the Seoul Agenda Goals for the development of arts education. The Philippines is serving as a gateway to ASEAN in conversation with the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Bureau in Jakarta.

We shall showcase cultural caregiving services of free arts education to vulnerable groups such as the differently-abled, the indigenous youth, the street kids, victims of trauma and violence; those in prison, drug rehabilitation centers, the refugees of armed conflict and environmental disasters, children in hospitals and others in difficult circumstances. It is a poverty alleviation effort to democratize the right to culture.

We are encouraging our community of artists through the International Theatre Institute and allied organizations based at UNESCO Paris to fuse and synergize concerns to address climate change with disaster risk reduction management. We shall fuse bio-cultural diversity protection in a teleconferencing event for TV and radio broadcast and webcast.

The ITI Earthsavers honoured as UNESCO Artists for Peace participated in demonstrating an interdisciplinary methodology for special arts education in Portugal at the first UNESCO World Arts Education Conference in 2006.

We are glad that after the approval of the Seoul Agenda, the Korean government and the plenary adopted the reiteration of the Philippine Delegation to seek a World Arts Education Week to sustain interest, attention and action to pursue the road map and the Seoul Agenda through the years in between a quadrianale held UNESCO World Arts Conference.