2019 Annual Report

Executive Summary

 

In this, our 19th year, we continue to provide a cross-disciplinary learning platform in Community Arts and Culture Education.

The Cultural Heritage Education Programme (CHEP) is the anchor project of Arts-ED which promotes and advocates for sustainable cultural heritage education in Penang’s schools, with both students and teachers as target groups. This year saw the programme being taken up a notch, going beyond exposure to local culture and resources to deepen participant engagement via the transmission of essential soft skills. All activities in this programme were aimed at providing the platform to learn, analyse and create through different media, viz:

  • heritage exploration

  • traditional woodwork

  • local market

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Our Place-based Learning (PBL) Capacity Building Programme for School Teachers in the formal school system went into its second year of piloting. We saw definite improvement in the adaptation of the methodology we have long used in the informal setting for the formal school system. The 3-part training (training, coaching and application) over a 2-year duration was piloted with 39 school teachers from 8 local schools. We now have 7 PBL case studies by schools which not only serve as great resources for other teachers wishing to adopt PBL but are also aligned with the Malaysia Education Blueprint to develop teachers’ capacity as 21st-century educators.

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The PBL method also gained the attention of international education institutions; with APCEIU Korea requesting us to train teachers in the use of PBL as a method for Global Citizenship Education (GCED) for the 3rd year.

In addition, two schools were given the Sekolah Budaya Warisan award to recognise their school-led cultural heritage project using PBL methodology under the CHEP programme. This is a new approach to developing a sustainable model of cultural heritage education among schools.

We are also proud to have co-produced with LUMA, Kaki Lima – a first of its kind tabletop game inspired by the five-foot ways in George Town, Penang – after numerous playtests and revisions over the past two years.

The new Arts-ED website was launched, enabling us to communicate more effectively with the public about our recent works – rendering them greater visibility. The new website also allowed us to maintain closer relationship with local and international partners and collaborators (in the governmental, corporate and NGO sectors) – Penang State Government agencies, Malaysia Creative Hubs, as well as groups from Macau, Taiwan, Nepal, and Korea.

Increasing needs and demands in teaching and learning from the formal (creative methodology complementing current school teaching method) and informal sectors (systematic approach in community engagement projects) present opportunities for Arts-ED to further develop potential training services.

 

It was another year of tremendous learning, and we look forward to more to come for 202020! Arts-ED’s 20th anniversary in 2020!