By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
The 2nd UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education, the largest global event in the field, will take place in Seoul in May of next year with some 2,000 participants coming from here and abroad.
The first conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2006, where the significance and value of arts education was underlined and expressed in the "Road Map for Arts Education."
The second conference will focus on encouraging the implementation of the "Road Map." Furthermore, the meeting in Seoul will target the socio-cultural dimensions of arts education and reinforce the importance of research.
The conference in Seoul is expected to contribute to the development of new strategies and strengthen collaboration between its main participants ― national authorities, local governments, teachers, artists, researchers, associations and NGOs ― to work together to reinforce the importance of arts education in schools as well as within society.
To successfully host the event, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism launched an organizing committee for the conference on Friday, which will be held May 25-28 at COEX in southern Seoul.
The Korean organizing committee headed by former culture minister Lee O-young held its inaugural assembly at the National Museum of Korea, with Culture Minister Yu In-chon in attendance, to discuss preparations.
"Next year has a lot of big events, including the G20 summit. This conference is also a very important event that will be held before the G20 summit. It is not too much to say that this event is a prelude to the summit because culture ministers from some 20 countries will hold a round-table meeting," said Yu.
Some 2,000 people are expected to attend, including government officials from the 193 UNESCO member states, nongovernmental organization representatives and artists.
"This conference will give us an opportunity to combine arts and social values and education and artistic creativity. Participants will reevaluate Korea's cultural capacity and further cooperate with us," Lee said.
At the conference, the member nations will adopt a declaration titled "Development Goals for Arts and Cultural Education."
Korea has promoted arts education as a primary policy agenda since 2000. It expressed its wish to host the 2010 conference on during the session in Lisbon, recognizing the need for global expansion of creativity in education through culture and art.
For more information, visit www.artsedu2010.kr.