Literacy in the Arts

This book explores the many dialogues that exist between the arts and literacy. It shows how the arts are inherently multimodal and therefore interface regularly with literate practice in learning and teaching contexts. It asks the questions: What does literacy look like in the arts? And what does it mean to be arts literate? It explores what is important to know and do in the arts and also what literacies are engaged in, through the journey to becoming an artist. The arts for the purpose of this volume include five art forms: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. The book provides a more productive exploration of the arts-literacy relationship. It acknowledges that both the arts and literacy are open-textured concepts and notes how they accommodate each other, learn about, and from each other and can potentially make education 'better'. It is when the two stretch each other that we see an educationally productive dialogic relationship emerge.

This book explores the many dialogues that exist between the arts and literacy. It shows how the arts are inherently multimodal and therefore interface regularly with literate practice in learning and teaching contexts. It asks the questions: What does literacy look like in the arts? And what does it mean to be arts literate? It explores what is important to know and do in the arts and also what literacies are engaged in, through the journey to becoming an artist. The arts for the purpose of this volume include five art forms: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. The book provides a more productive exploration of the arts-literacy relationship. It acknowledges that both the arts and literacy are open-textured concepts and notes how they accommodate each other, learn about, and from each other and can potentially make education ‘better’. It is when the two stretch each other that we see an educationally productive dialogic relationship emerge.

Part I – Theorizing the arts and literacy.- 1. Literacy and the arts: Interpretation and expression of symbolic form.- 2. First literacies: Art, creativity, play, constructive meaning-making.- 3. Visual arts education and the formation of literacies: An exploration of visuality.- 4. Interfacing visual and verbal narrative art in paper and digital media: Recontextualising literature and literacies.- 5. Reflective practice in the arts.Part II – Teaching and learning literacy in the arts. 6. Literacy and knowledge: classroom practice in the arts.- 7. Dance literacy: An embodied phenomena.- 8. Drama literacy:Indefinite articles.- 9. Developing media production skills for literacy in a primary school classroom: Digital materials, embodied knowledge and material contexts.- 10. Music literacies: Teaching diversity.- 11. Connect, transform, learn: Achieving visual literacy in the art classroom.Part III – Diverse arts-literacy dialogues. 12. Improving literacy through the arts.- 13. Using visualisation and imagery to enhance reading comprehension.- 14. Musicking as literacy: possibilities and pragmatisms for literacies learning.- 15. Storytelling as an art literacy: Use of narrative structure in Aboriginal arts practice and performance.- 16. The arts and literacy, ‘amplified right’: Hearing and reading J.S. Bach.- 17. Encouraging productive arts-literacy dialogues: A call to action.