Professor Anne BAMFORD
abamford@wimbledon.ac.uk
UK/Australia

Professor Anne Bamford is Director of The Engine Room at the University of the Arts London.  Anne has been recognised nationally and internationally for her research in arts education, emerging literacies and visual communication. Through her research, Anne has pursued issues of innovation, social impact and equity and diversity. As a World Scholar for UNESCO, Anne researched and wrote “The Wow Factor: Global research compendium on the impact of the arts in education” published by Waxmann. She has conducted major national arts impact and evaluation studies for Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium and Australia and is a senior advisor to a number of governments and industries on arts education and future cultural policy. Anne was awarded the Australian Institute for Educational Research, Outstanding Educational Research Award for 2002 and short listed for the British Female Innovator of the Year in 2006.

Inspiration

The only reflection of the quality of arts practice is what is reflected through the mirrors of the eyes, and these mirrors are very small. The challenge is to magnify and project these mirrors and to open up the mirrors within the heart and soul.

This can be achieved through bringing research, enterprise and community together around arts-rich activities, to build innovative and sustainable systems of knowledge transfer focused on the impact of the arts within society. The transformative effect of the arts can only be achieved where there is equitable accessibility to the arts for all sectors of society. That has not always been the case. In too many instances, the arts have been associated only with the elite and powerful. The challenge for the next decade is to ensure all citizens are equally literate in creating, using and enjoying the arts. This will be increasingly important as we move to a ‘glocal’ (global and local) society where the designer world and the aestheticisation of communication combine with a growing desire for greater capacities for collaboration and change. Yet, from evaluations around the world, there is a gaping disparity between the ideals of cultural policy and the practices in schools. While many children engage actively in rich-arts experiences in their leisure, these abounding and diverse creative experiences are rarely reflected in the learning that occurs within the school. Importantly too, even when arts education does exist within schools, the quality is often so poor as to actually do more harm than good to the child’s sense of identity, confidence and creative and artistic expression. The arts world itself has been characterised by various groups and factions often squabbling amongst themselves and failing to speak in original, clear and creative ways in world policy. All too often, a failure to speak across sector boundaries has meant that the arts remain marginal to the overall workings of a society. By contrast, in many non-western and economically developing countries the arts are embedded in cultural change and speak powerfully of the politics of the soul and the value of communication that extends beyond words. It is my hope that over the summit, these many languages of humanity can be heard in harmony and with strength.

「啟發」

藝術實踐的高下不易反映，若把研究、企業和社區拉近，建立創新及可持續的知識傳授方法，讓社區各界都有公平機會接觸藝術，則藝術在社會的演進能量就能凸顯。未來十年的挑戰是如何讓所有人在創造、使用及享受藝術上達到相同的素養。環顧各國，有太多的因素造成藝術教育政策和實踐之間的失衡，就連藝術界本身也意見分歧，未能跨界別表達意見，讓藝術被邊緣化。

反之，在許多非西方和經濟發展中的國家，藝術已成為文化改變的確切部分。筆者希望在高峰會上，可以大聲和諧地聽到這許多的人文語言。