GrowinG Future innovators - ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative ...

167 SoundHouse is an
internationally affiliated
network and this particular
node was established
in 1986.
Photograph courtesy of the
Alfred Brash SoundHouse,
The Arts Centre, Melbourne
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METHODS
Contemporary arts institutions can
provide schools with access to, and
experimentation with new media
technologies and a range of other
innovation products and processes…
by cultivating active creators rather
than passive consumers and sharing
inter/disciplinary ways of engaging with
the cycles and phases of creativity and
innovation.
Beyond their presentation programs,
workshops offered by contemporary arts
institutions can give practical experience
and introduction to ways that artists
manage ideas, materials, processes and
technologies. The value in this, says Fiona
James from the Malthouse Theatre, is that it
enables participants to originate, to “imagine
for themselves, and actually create something
that’s not given to them, that’s their own.”
Jenny Simpson from AWESOME Arts
believes the importance of such opportunities
is much broader than the potential to
generate young artists and is often more
about exposing students to various tools,
“giving kids other options, other ways of
thinking, that they may choose to take up or
not.” Methods used by contemporary artists
are often highly generative and reveal ways in
which innovation can be seeded. “I’m looking
at the collection not in terms of objects, but
in terms of practices,”, says Anna Cultler
from the Tate Modern. These practices she
sees as encapsulating the model of creative
learning whereby “you identify a problem,
have divergent thinking about it, and stretch
for originality.”
Some arts organisations assist schools
with the access and uptake of new media
and web technologies, developing visual
and digital literacy and new ways to realize
ideas. The Alfred Brash SoundHouse 167 is
this kind of arts education hub. Based at
the Arts Centre of Victoria it specializes in
the use of music technology and electronic
media such as video, animation and web
design. Adrian Alexander, the director from
1991 to 2005, explains that the guiding
philosophy of its founding father, Alfred
Brash, was to “create a legacy that provides
an opportunity for kids to experience the
creative process… and if they didn’t go on
to develop a particular passion and become
part of the ongoing creative process, at least
Growing future Innovators: a scoping study 45