About the Journal

The first edition of JACE was produced in 2007 under the editorship of Dr Wesley Imms. In 2013, Dr Christine Sinclair took over editing the journal, with Wes coming back to this role in 2016. The Journal has had guest editors such as Neryl Jeanneret, Head of Music education in the MGSE, Chris Sommervelle (Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne), George  Bellivue (University of British Columbia) and Purnima Ruanglertbutr  (University of Melbourne). We thank all past editors, and guest editors, for their stewardship of the journal and Professor John O’Toole for his inspiration in getting JACE off the ground.

In his first editorial, Wes Imms wrote in regard to the need for the journal: “Creativity has long been lauded as foundational to a child’s social and educational development. During the first decades of the past century Wallas (1926) argued that creative thinking needed to be actively taught and John Dewey (1932) advocated an educational philosophy with the nurturing of creativity as its central theme. The 1960s witnessed a swathe of creativity-focused research, ranging from attempts to empirically define it (Guilford, 1968), quantitatively measure it (Torrance, 1967), and qualitatively assess its value in educational practice (Clifford, 1964). With such a long history, and due to the persuasiveness and quality of that discussion, it comes as no surprise that creativity has recent reappeared in a number of Australia’s state curricula in recent years”.

Now ten years old, under the banner of the Melbourne UNESCO Arts Edcuation Observatory, we will continue to explore international issues of artistry and creativity in contemporary research and teaching and the interface between them. As an open access journal, we seek to promote praxis in artistic and creative education, to provide an evidence-based bridge between arts and artistic practice, creative practices in educational contexts, and learning research and theory in all these areas.