Drama Australia Updates
All DramaWest members are automatically a member of Drama Australia.
This article from The Conversation with members is especially useful at subject selection time.
Please read the attached Call for Contributions for details on the theme, guidelines and responsibilities. All articles must be submitted by Monday 30 June 2025 via email ADEM.Drama.Australia@gmail.com. If you would like to discuss an idea with the Co-Editors, please email prior to this date.
Join the National Community of Drama Australia
IDEA
Become a Member of DramaWest today to access resources and events provided by International Drama Education Association.
NAAE Updates
An Update from John Saunders - Chair of NAAE
| With several Australian tertiary arts, creative industries, and arts education courses being discontinued, reduced, or currently under review, the NAAE is conducting an anonymous survey to gauge the full impact of these changes. If you know of a course or major at an Australian university that has been affected between 2018 and 2025, please consider submitting an anonymous response to the survey. The survey can be completed as many times as needed for individual courses. | |
| Please feel free to share. This is also on their socials. The NAAE are preparing to write to the Commonwealth Minister for Education and Minister for Arts regarding this. |
Submission to the National Cultural Policy Consultation, Revive 2.0
May 2026
Arts education is fundamental to Australia’s cultural, educational and economic future. It develops creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication, while fostering cultural understanding, identity, wellbeing, inclusion, community cohesion, and supports participation in cultural life. It underpins the development of artists, audiences and the broader creative workforce.
Australia’s cultural and creative sector contributes over $67 billion to the national economy and employs more than 590,000 people, representing around 2.5% of GDP (Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts [DITRDCA], n.d.). It is therefore essential in achieving the vision of Australia’s National Cultural Policy.
However, arts education and training in Australia are in systemic decline. Participation in senior secondary Arts subjects has fallen significantly over the past decade, with national enrolments declining by approximately 21% between 2015 and 2023. At the same time, tertiary provision is contracting, with over 50 Creative Arts degree programs discontinued since 2018 and enrolments at their lowest levels in recent years. Workforce shortages are emerging across the arts and cultural sector, while access to quality arts education in schools remains uneven and inequitable, particularly in regional, rural and low socio-economic communities.
This inequity is closely tied to broader patterns of disadvantage. Around one in seven Australians live in poverty (Davidson & Bradbury, 2025), and students in low socio-economic communities are significantly less likely to have access to sustained, high-quality arts education, despite evidence that these students stand to benefit the most.
These trends reflect a structural gap in national policy. While arts education is acknowledged within the National Cultural Policy Revive, it is not embedded as a core pillar of policy design, investment or accountability. Responsibility remains fragmented across Arts and Education portfolios, resulting in a disconnect between policy intent and implementation. Without a coordinated national approach, the foundations required to sustain Australia’s arts and cultural ecosystem will continue to weaken.
Arts education is not an optional enrichment activity for young people. It is the system through which participation begins, capability is developed, and pathways into further study, careers and lifelong engagement in the Arts are established. Strengthening arts education is therefore essential to realising the ambitions of the National Cultural Policy.
Read the full NAAE submission to the National Cultural Policy.
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