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The Creative Arts involves the subjects of Drama, Music, Visual Arts and Photography, Video and Digital Media. Students are offered opportunities in the classroom, and in a variety of extra-curricular activities. St Clare’s is well known for excellent results in our region and across the Diocese in all subject areas.

In Drama, Music, Photography, Video and Digital Imaging and Visual Arts, students can investigate, shape and symbolically represent ideas, feelings, attitudes and beliefs. By studying these art forms students acquire skills in interpretation, communication, performance, and critical analysis and become aware of the technical processes and technologies that may be used to heighten their representations of the world around them.

Creative Arts subjects can be employed as a technique for exploring personal and community issues and developing social skills. They cater for a broad range of students from varying social and cultural backgrounds. The Creative Arts allows for the exploration of attitudes and values of many groups in Australian society. Students make, perform and critically study aspects of Drama, Music and Visual Arts in Australian and other societies and cultures. Students learn through this program of study the values of respect, tolerance and an appreciation of other cultural beliefs and opinions.

The aim of this faculty is to ensure that all students develop their creative potential. We strive to establish programs that provide learning opportunities, encourage the enjoyment, and promote self-esteem that comes from involvement with performance and in the making of art.

We develop in our students an appreciation for and value of the contribution artists, both visual and performing, make to our society. We encourage students to recognise within themselves, their unique capacity to express their ideas, making their own contributions to the world around them.

We aim to develop skills in making, performing and critically studying the Creative Arts and assist students to develop original and artistic ideas and to be able to show these in a public display or in performance. Further, we seek to develop the potential within our students to apply these skills to work, further study, training, or leisure. We aim to foster within our students respect in every way for the artistic work and oral traditions of others.

The Creative Arts faculty places great value on the development of students’ intellectual and practical autonomy, reflective action, critical judgment, and the understanding of the role that creative and performing arts plays in the development of the “whole” person. The faculty also works to inculcate in students the belief that the value of a civilization is measured by its cultural achievements. Students are encouraged to value cultural pursuits for both a professional oriented purpose and for leisure purposes.

The faculty offers a wide range of opportunities for students to develop their own interests, to be self- motivated and active learners who can take responsibility for and continue their own learning in school and post-school settings.

This philosophy should be implemented by involving the faculty in the following aims.

  • Provide tasks that develop students’ creative potential to perform or display.
  • Display the creative results either by performing at school events or hanging of artworks around the school.
  • Encourage students with regular assessment and feedback of their efforts.
  • Open the range of experience through excursions and incursions so students learn from the efforts of others in the Creative Arts.
  • Development an awareness of the WH&S requirement within each discipline.
  • Have due regard for the personal development of students so that each may achieve at their own level.
  • Be aware and facilitate the individual learning styles of all students and put in place alternative programs so that students with learning difficulties are facilitated within the class.
  • Provide relevant and achievable assessment strategies.
  • Demonstrate the value of Creative Arts to a wider audience by putting on public displays.

Stage 4 (Years 7- 8)

Music and Visual Arts are both compulsory in Years 7 and 8 and have a mandatory 100 hours.

In Music, students will explore patterns in music; popular music including rock and jazz; and music for film, television and radio. The focus is on performance, composition and listening.

In Visual Arts, students will explore the mediums of drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture as displayed in Aboriginal art, ceramics, Australian landscape, depth and perspective, and Surrealism.

Stage 5 (Years 9- 10)

Students may select from the following 100-hour courses: Drama, Music, Visual Arts and Photography, Video and Digital Imaging.

In Drama, students will explore melodrama, improvisation, play-building, physical theatre, scripted drama, monologue, and group performance.

In Music, students will focus is on performance, composition and listening through the study of music of other cultures, pioneers of rock, classical hits, and jazz music.

In Photography, Video and Digital Media students will explore Surrealist photography and editing through Photoshop, appropriation, cultural photography, animation, film and video, and studio photography.

In Visual Arts, students will explore the mediums of drawing, printmaking, ceramics, painting and sculpture by investigating the themes of social justice, architecture, etching, organic ceramics, Impressionism, and self-image.

Stage 6 (Years 11- 12)

Senior students can select from the following 240-hour courses: Drama, Music and Visual Arts.