Join Director of the Koori Curriculum, Jessica Staines who will lead you through a thoughtful process that supports educators to consider how to meaningfully respond to Aboriginal art provocations and facilitate appropriate experiences.

Designed to support educators to meaningfully explore Aboriginal art and culture with young children, this live webinar is an essential resource for creating culturally inclusive arts practices.

Aboriginal inspired art experience in an early childhood context is so much more than just collaged red, black and yellow flags and cotton bud dot paintings. This live webinar will inspire educators and open them up to the many possibilities of how they can facilitate respectful Aboriginal inspired art experiences with children without creating copies of the artists work.

Educators will acquire knowledge on both traditional and contemporary art practices and will be exposed to children’s literature and resources that support the inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives in their art curriculum.

This session will include:

  •    Programming and Planning: Processes that support educators to develop lessons that engage with Aboriginal perspectives genuinely in their arts program.

  •    Community Connection Advice: Offers guidance on effectively partnering with local communities to ensure respectful inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives tailored to local traditions and histories.

  •   Aboriginal Pedagogy: Encourages a dynamic approach to teaching through culture rather than about culture, with activities that support intercultural ways of knowing, being and doing.

Links to the Early Years Learning Framework:

Outcome 1.1: Children feel safe secure and supported. Educators support this learning when they for example enable children to see their culture in the environment, e.g. Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander art from the local region, cultural events that are significant to the child’s life.

Outcome 3.3: Children are aware of and develop strategies to support their own mental and physical health and personal safety. Educators support this learning when they for example provide ongoing opportunities for children to express their ideas, feeling and emotions through the creative arts.

Outcome 4.1: Children develop a growth mindset and learning dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity. This is evident when children for example engage in creative experiences such as art, dance and drama.

Outcome 4.2: Children develop a range of learning and thinking skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesizing, researching and investigating. This is evident when children for example use a range of media to express their ideas through the arts e.g clay, drawing, painting, digital technologies.

Outcome 4.4: Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and process material. This is evident when children for example create and construct artwork in a sustainable way using natural and manufactured materials and tools, drawing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, history, culture, customs and celebrations.

Outcome 5.2: Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts. Educators support this learning when they for example teach art as language and how artists can use the elements and principles to construct visual/musical/dance/media texts.

Jessica will provide several examples on how she has done this with infants, toddlers and preschoolers and give advice on the dos and don’ts in relation to Aboriginal arts practice.

Please note: the webinar will be live and not recorded.

In my private membership, The Koori Curriculum Club, you’ll get amazing support to assist in the development of your centres Aboriginal programs, with monthly master classes, lesson plans, fact sheets, children's book in focus and so much more.