Creative Arts
In Creative Arts, students fulfil the mandatory course requirements in the areas of Visual Arts and Music. Students are provided with the opportunity to extend their knowledge and specialize in one or more of the additional programs offered: Visual Arts, Photography, Music, Dance and Drama. In the senior years, candidates sitting for the Higher School Certificate may elect to pursue studies in any of these areas.
Additionally the Creative Arts faculty provides opportunities for students to participate in a number of extra-curricular activities including band, choir and dance ensembles. Performance engagements occur locally and regionally at various eisteddfods and festivals.
Subject Areas
- Dance
- Drama
- Music
- Visual Arts
Creative Arts Staff
MS K VANDERBENT (Art/Music) HT
MS E BLANSJAAR (VA/IST/LC)
MR J .LAMBERT (Music)
MR H. MICHAELIAN (Visual Arts)
MS P WEIR (Dance/Drama)
MS Z BEALE (Visual Arts)
DRAMA
The Drama syllabus allows for a wide variety of approaches. The emphasis in Drama study is on improvisation, play building, stagecraft, the reading and writing of scripts as texts for performance and the place of Drama in society, present and past.
Students develop abilities to communicate with increased skill and confidence to use their voices and body movements effectively andto work cooperatively in group situations.
Students also prepare scripts for public performances, experience and analyse live and recorded performances and reflect on their own creative work.
MUSIC
Music covers performance, composition, harmony and history. A study of music can lead to higher academic qualifications, to a wide variety of career opportunities (in radio, television and film for example) and to greater appreciation for leisure and hobby interests.
Music studied includes Classical, Jazz, Popular and Rock and students selected in the school band practise their skills and frequently give public performances at school based and community events.
VISUAL ARTS
The subject of Visual Arts is theoretically and practically sustained by practice, the frames, and a conceptual framework about art. These underpinnings form the basis for content and accommodate the range of student abilities and interests.
Fostering interest and enjoyment in the production and consumption of art, the subject seeks to build informed citizens and discerning audiences for art and to raise the standard of cultural awareness in contemporary society. In contemporary societies many types of knowledge are increasingly managed through imagery and spectacle and much of students’ knowledge is acquired in this way. The subject of Visual Arts serves to facilitate the interpretation of such information.
Through the making and studying of art, students develop an informed point of view that acknowledges different sets of beliefs and values, and respects cultural diversity. The subject rewards individual thinking and develops students’ skills in reflection, critical thinking and judgement.
In artmaking, aspects of content are engaged with through the making of artworks in at least two of the expressive forms (e.g. painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, digital media). In art criticism and art history, students focus on the key concepts within each aspect of content through broad investigations of ideas in the visual arts from Australia and other regions at different times.
In Term 1, year 8 Visual Arts students studied the topic “Australian Icons and Identity”. They referenced Mambo designs to make humorous representations of stereotypical Australian situations in their investigations of the postmodern tools of irony, wit and satire. The examples shown here are hand-coloured lino relief prints produced by 8VA1. Other examples are shown in the Visual Arts Gallery.
