K-Arts & ALIA Co-host the International Symposium on “Arts and Arts Education for Sustainable Development”

On 22 September, the Korean National Research Center for the Arts affiliated with the K-Arts opened and live-streamed online the 2023 international symposium on “Arts and Arts Education for Sustainable Development.” The Asian League of Institutes of the Arts (ALIA), the event co-host, was founded in 2012 under the K-Arts’s direction. The institution seeks to enhance the political, social, and cultural influence of arts in Asia to disseminate and develop arts education through exchange and cooperation among related educational institutions. From the last year, the K-Arts resumed taking the chancellor role in the event.

This year, the symposium focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN, to which the leading universities and arts and cultural institutions around the world currently pay attention as the most essential future vision. The current practices of SDGs by overseas arts universities were discussed along with the K-Arts’s future assignment.

The symposium commenced with a keynote speech by Kim Daejin, president of K-Arts and chair of the ALIA. Eight ALIA member organizations from seven nations, including the Kazakh National Academy of Arts (Kazakhstan), Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University (Kazakhstan), Mongolian State University of Arts and Culture (Mongolia), Tainan National University of the Arts (Taiwan), Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta (Indonesia), Laselle College of the Arts (Singapore), Kyoto City University of Arts (Japan), and Multimedia University (Malaysia), participated in the round table. The participants shared the current SDGs issues each of them is either practicing in the various fields of arts such as performing arts, design, fashion, and film or facing in arts education.

In the next session, Professor Paul Shrivastava of Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University (USA), a member of the Club of Rome, delivered a speech emphasizing the importance of arts and arts education for sustainable life under the theme of “Arts and Arts Education in the Anthropocene Era.” Professor Johannes Widodo, who teaches architecture at the National University of Singapore, introduced the curriculum and project related to the ethical correlation between climate matter and human conduct. Professor Tanja Beer of Griffith University introduced a creative way to adopt ecological thinking to design education for theater and performing art.

In the last session, Director Kerstin Stutterheim, a professor at Edinburgh Napier University in the UK who contributed to forming a network of SDGs arts education with the UN, introduced the practices of zero-carbon campaign conducted in arts universities in Germany and the UK. Professor Victor Hunter of Bath Spa University shared an idea about incorporating SDGs into dance education while Professor Idil Gaziulusoy, who teaches design at Aalto University, talked about a degree program and academic business model for creative sustainability.