The Visual Arts Circle is Launched

Kieran Donaghy December 9, 2016

The Visual Arts Circle was  launched at the 5th edition of the Image Conference in Valetta, Malta on 6th October.

The Visual Arts Circle is a community of practice made up of language teaching professionals, teachers, teacher trainers, writers, editors, researchers, designers, illustrators, artists, photographers, and filmmakers, all with a shared belief in the value of visual arts – drawing, painting, sculpture, design, crafts, photography, video, and filmmaking – in language education. We believe that incorporating visual arts is an extremely effective way of improving the quality of teaching and learning, particularly in the field of language teaching. Through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group our members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop personally and professionally.

We intend to:

• engage language teachers in practical uses of the visual arts in the language classroom
• encourage a dialogue between language teachers in order to share activities and creative approaches to the use of visual arts in language teaching
• bring together like-minded professionals so as to build a creative and vibrant visual arts community
• open the group to all those committed to its values and objectives beyond the language teaching community
• publicise the value of visual arts in language education through articles, books, conferences and workshops, videos, films, and social media
• seek cooperation with any recognised organisation which shares our ideas and values

We hope to make a difference through:

• involving professionals in multiple fields and at all levels
• demonstrating the benefits of visual arts in language education with practical and useful guidance from experts in a variety of fields

If you are interested in the use of the visual arts in language education, you can join us by sending a short biodata (maximum 150 words) in the third person singular, for example,

“Andréia Zakime is a teacher, teacher trainer and course designer. She works at the Academic Department of Cultura Inglesa São Paulo and holds an MA in Publishing and Editorial Design. Andréia has a keen interest in the use of student-generated content to enable learners to act as protagonists in the learning process.”

and a photo to kieranthomasdonaghy@gmail.com.

We look forward to working with as many language teaching professionals as possible on this exciting, collaborative and innovative project.