Community of Knowledge on Arts and Cultural Education in Europe (ComACE)

Arts and cultural education occurs in many locations and contexts. By means of art and culture, individuals learn within and outside formal education settings. In addition to different learning experiences, the policy and approach as well as infrastructure for arts and cultural education differ strongly. All these differences result in the difficulty to obtain an overview of all policy and practical initiatives within this field. Nevertheless, a clear view on this part would be particularly interesting to compare formal and non-formal arts and cultural education, policy making in different countries side by side, the impact of different policies and different authorities on practice, etc. Furthermore, such overviews can also be used as tools to enhance communication and cooperation between officials and professionals with regard to arts and cultural education.
This publication offers an overview of arts and cultural education in Flanders, focusing on the policy for arts and cultural education and how this policy is implemented within and outside Flemish formal education. In addition to information on policy and implementation, this publication also contains data on evaluation, monitoring, good practices and many references to relevant literature.
The present publication consists of a series of short sections that can be read independently and are aimed at a wide audience. Every chapter is structured in the same way. The publication actually reads like a website and is based on the Flemish chapters of the ComACE compendium, which is published as a website in the autumn of 2011.
The compendium can be consulted on a web-based portal (www.comace.org) launched in the autumn of 2011. The name of this website, ComACE, stands for 'Community of Knowledge on Arts and Cultural Education in Europe'. The name also conveys the website's aim: to act as a platform for systematic exchange of knowledge on arts and cultural education, not only for Belgium (Flanders) but also for several European member states. In addition to this compendium, the website also contains an overview of terms (glossary)on arts and cultural education and information on planned conferences, seminars, literature, etc. (general section).
We hope you will enjoy this glossary as a useful tool to compare, monitor and share policy and practice.