THE ARTS

Music is a rich and engaging course that explores the power of music as a form of expression, communication, storytelling, and worship. Through the study of a wide range of musical genres, styles, and traditions, students develop an appreciation for the role music plays in shaping cultures, reflecting human experiences, and connecting communities across time and place.

Students investigate how music serves as a cultural narrative, communicating stories, beliefs, values, and historical events. They explore diverse musical traditions from Australia and around the world, examining how music reflects identity, culture, and social change. Through listening, analysis, discussion, and performance, students develop the ability to critically appreciate and respond to music in its many forms.

A key focus of the course is the exploration of worship music and its significance within the Christian faith. Students examine how music has been used throughout history to express praise, worship, prayer, and devotion, and consider the role of music in contemporary Christian communities.

Students are introduced to a variety of musical instruments and foundational performance skills, developing an understanding of rhythm, melody, harmony, notation, and ensemble performance. Through practical experiences, they gain confidence in playing, creating, and performing music while developing skills in collaboration, creativity, and self-expression.

As students progress through Years 7–10, they build musical knowledge, performance skills, and cultural understanding, while developing a lifelong appreciation for music and its ability to inspire, communicate, and enrich lives. The course provides a strong foundation for further study in music and the performing arts while fostering creativity, confidence, and personal growth.

Drama is a creative and thought-provoking course that explores the power of performance to tell stories, communicate ideas, and examine the human experience. Through the study and creation of dramatic works, students develop an appreciation for the role of drama as a cultural narrative that reflects the values, beliefs, challenges, and aspirations of individuals and societies across time and place.

Students investigate a variety of dramatic genres, styles, and traditions, ranging from classical and contemporary theatre to improvisation, physical theatre, and performance-based storytelling. Through viewing, analysing, creating, and performing drama, students learn how dramatic works can entertain, challenge, inspire, and provoke reflection.

A central focus of the course is the exploration of life, relationships, identity, and the moral and ethical questions that shape human experience. Students examine how drama addresses themes such as belonging, justice, courage, responsibility, forgiveness, conflict, hope, and personal choice. Through role-play, character development, script work, and performance, they are encouraged to consider different perspectives and develop empathy for others.

The course provides opportunities for students to explore what it means to be human by engaging with stories that reflect the complexities of life and the diversity of human experiences. Students learn how drama can help individuals and communities make sense of their world, wrestle with important questions, and imagine possibilities for positive change.

Throughout Years 7–10, students develop confidence, communication skills, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking while building an appreciation for the performing arts. By engaging with drama as both an art form and a lens through which to understand humanity, students gain valuable insights into themselves, others, and the world around them. The course provides a strong foundation for further study in Drama and the Arts while nurturing expressive, reflective, and compassionate young people.

Visual Art is a creative and reflective course that explores the power of art to communicate ideas, tell stories, and express the human experience. Through the study and creation of artworks across a variety of media and styles, students develop an appreciation for the ways visual art reflects culture, identity, beliefs, and the world around us.

Students investigate a diverse range of artistic forms, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, mixed media, digital art, photography, and contemporary visual practices. Through practical and theoretical studies, they learn how artists use visual language to communicate meaning, challenge perspectives, and respond to the issues and experiences of their time.

A central focus of the course is the exploration of visual art as a cultural narrative. Students examine how artworks tell stories about individuals, communities, and societies, revealing insights into history, traditions, values, and worldviews. They investigate how artists from different cultures and eras have used art to explore themes of identity, belonging, relationships, justice, hope, and human flourishing.

Through creating and responding to artworks, students are encouraged to reflect on life’s opportunities and challenges, including the moral and ethical questions that shape human experience. They explore themes such as personal identity, relationships, compassion, resilience, responsibility, and the search for meaning and purpose. Students are challenged to consider how art can deepen understanding, inspire empathy, and encourage thoughtful engagement with the world.

Throughout Years 7–10, students develop technical skills, creative thinking, visual literacy, and critical analysis while building confidence in expressing their own ideas and perspectives. By exploring what it means to be human through the lens of visual art, students gain a deeper appreciation of themselves, others, and the diverse cultures that shape our world.

The course provides a strong foundation for further study in Visual Arts and related creative fields while fostering creativity, imagination, reflection, and a lifelong appreciation for the arts.

Film, Television and Media is a dynamic and engaging course that introduces students to the world of visual storytelling, media production, and communication in contemporary society. Through the study of film, television, and digital media, students explore how media shapes the way people understand, interpret, and engage with the world around them.

Students investigate the various forms and genres of media, examining how stories are constructed and communicated through moving images, sound, editing, visual design, and technology. They analyse a range of film, television, and media texts to understand how creators use narrative, character, symbolism, and production techniques to influence audiences and communicate ideas.

The course explores media as a powerful form of cultural narrative, examining how film and television reflect social values, historical events, cultural identities, and human experiences. Students consider how media can entertain, inform, persuade, challenge perspectives, and inspire change, while developing an understanding of the ethical responsibilities associated with media creation and consumption.

Through practical projects, students learn the fundamentals of media production, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, filming, editing, sound design, and digital content creation. They apply creative and technical skills to produce their own media products for a variety of audiences and purposes, developing confidence as communicators and storytellers.

Throughout the course, students build critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and digital literacy skills while exploring the evolving role of media in an increasingly connected world. By examining media as a form of communication, narrative, and engagement, students gain a deeper appreciation of its influence on individuals, communities, and society.

Film, Television and Media provides an excellent foundation for further study in Media Arts, Film and Television, Digital Media, Journalism, Marketing, Communications, and other creative and technology-related fields. It equips students with valuable skills for both future careers and active participation in the modern media landscape.

The arts are an intellectually engaging intersection of lateral thought and practice. They interrogate the human experience and challenge our understandings by encouraging and provoking alternative ways of seeing, thinking and doing. They enable us to know and observe our world collectively and as individuals. They reveal a sense of who we are and might become as we make connections and new meaning of the world around us and our place in it.

Creative and expressive communication is central to the arts. Students learn to pose and solve problems, work independently and in collaboration, and create and convey meaning from various viewpoints. New skills are learnt and knowledge is created through the investigation and experience of valued traditions and practices across various art forms.

The arts encourage unity through active involvement in building cultural literacy by respecting and valuing the meaningful and unique impact of Aboriginal people’s and Torres Strait Islander people’s contribution to Australia’s arts knowledge, traditions and experience. Australia’s multicultural identity, cultural inheritance and contemporary arts practice is enhanced through this recognition and the shared inspirations of the broader Asia–Pacific community.

Drama interrogates the human experience by investigating, communicating and embodying stories, experiences, emotions and ideas that reflect the human experience. It allows students to look to the past with curiosity and explore inherited traditions of artistry to inform their own artistic practice and shape their world as global citizens. Drama is created and performed in diverse spaces, including formal and informal theatre spaces, to achieve a wide range of purposes. Drama engages students in imaginative meaning-making processes and involves them using a range of artistic skills as they make and respond to dramatic works. The range of purposes, contexts and audiences provides students with opportunities to experience, reflect on, understand, communicate, collaborate and appreciate different perspectives of themselves, others and the world in which they live.

Across the course of study, students will develop a range of interrelated skills of drama that will complement the knowledge and processes needed to create dramatic action and meaning. They will learn about the dramatic languages and how these contribute to the creation, interpretation and critique of dramatic action and meaning for a range of purposes. A study of a range of forms and styles in a variety of inherited traditions, current practice and emerging trends, including those from different cultures and contexts, forms a core aspect of the learning. Drama provides opportunities for students to learn how to engage with dramatic works as both artists and audience through the use of critical literacies.

In Drama, students engage in aesthetic learning experiences that develop the 21st century skills of critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and teamwork, personal and social skills, and information & communication technologies (ICT) skills. They learn how to reflect on their artistic, intellectual, emotional and kinaesthetic understanding as creative and critical thinkers and curious artists. Additionally, students will develop personal confidence, skills of inquiry and social skills as they work collaboratively with others.

Drama exists wherever people present their experiences, ideas and feelings through reenacted stories. From ancient origins in ritual and ceremony to contemporary live and mediated presentation in formal and informal theatre spaces, drama gives expression to our sense of self, our desires, our relationships and our aspirations. Whether the purpose is to entertain, celebrate or educate, engaging in drama enables students to experience, reflect on, communicate and appreciate different perspectives of themselves, others and the world they live in.

Drama in Practice gives students opportunities to make and respond to drama by planning, creating, adapting, producing, performing, interpreting and evaluating a range of drama works or events in a variety of settings. A key focus of this syllabus is engaging with school and/or local community contexts and, where possible, interacting with practising artists. Learning is connected to relevant industry practice and opportunities, promoting future employment and preparing students as agile, competent, innovative and safe workers, who can work collaboratively to solve problems and complete project-based work in various contexts.

As students gain practical experience in a number of onstage and offstage roles, they recognise the role drama plays and value the contribution it makes to the social and cultural lives of local, national and international communities. 

Students participate in learning experiences in which they apply knowledge and develop creative and technical skills in communicating ideas and intention to an audience. They also learn essential workplace health and safety procedures relevant to the drama and theatre industry, as well as effective work practices and industry skills needed by a drama practitioner. Individually and in groups, where possible, they shape and express dramatic ideas of personal and social significance that serve particular purposes and contexts. They identify and follow creative and technical processes from conception to realisation, which foster cooperation and creativity, and help students to develop problem-solving skills and gain confidence and resilience.

Film, Television & New Media uses an inquiry learning model, developing critical thinking skills and creative capabilities through the exploration of five key concepts that operate in the contexts of production and use. The key concepts of technologies, representations, audiences, institutions and languages are drawn from a range of contemporary media theories and practices. Students will creatively apply film, television and new media key concepts to individually and collaboratively make moving-image media products and will investigate and respond to moving-image media content and production contexts.

Film, television and new media are our primary sources of information and entertainment. They are important channels for educational and cultural exchange and are fundamental to our self-expression and representation as individuals and as communities. Engaging meaningfully in local and global participatory media cultures enables us to understand and express ourselves. Through making and responding to moving-image media products, students will develop a respect for diverse perspectives and a critical awareness of the expressive, functional and creative potential of moving-image media in a diverse range of global contexts.

By studying Film, Television & New Media, students will develop knowledge and skills in creative thinking, communication, collaboration, planning, critical analysis, and digital and ethical citizenship. They will develop the necessary critical and creative skills to reflect on and appreciate Australian and global cultures and make sense of what they see and experience. Film, Television & New Media will equip students for a future of unimagined possibilities with highly transferable and flexible thinking and communication skills.

Media arts refers to art-making and artworks composed and transmitted through film, television, radio, print, gaming and web-based media. Students explore the role of the media in reflecting and shaping society’s values, attitudes and beliefs. They learn to be ethical and responsible users and creators of digital technologies and to be aware of the social, environmental and legal impacts of their actions and practices. 

Students develop the necessary knowledge, understanding and skills required for emerging careers in a dynamic and creative field that is constantly adapting to new technologies. Learning is connected to relevant arts industry practice and opportunities, promoting future employment and preparing students as agile, competent, innovative and safe arts workers, who can work collaboratively to solve problems and complete project-based work.

When responding, students use analytical processes to identify individual, community or global problems and develop plans and designs for media artworks. They use reasoning and decision-making to justify their choices, reflecting and evaluating on the success of their own and others’ art-making. When making, students demonstrate knowledge and understanding of media arts practices to communicate artistic intention. They gain an appreciation of how media artworks connect ideas and purposes with audiences. Students develop competency with and independent selection of modes, media technologies and media techniques as they make design products and media artworks, synthesising ideas developed through the responding phase. 

Music is a unique aural art form that uses sound and silence as a means of personal expression. It is a powerful medium because it affects a wide range of human activities, including personal, social, cultural and entertainment pursuits. Making music, becoming part of music and arts communities, and interacting with practising musicians and artists nurtures students’ creative thinking and problem-solving skills as they follow processes from conception to realisation and express music ideas of personal significance. The discipline and commitment required in musicmaking provides students with opportunities for personal growth and development of lifelong learning skills. Learning is connected to relevant industry practice and opportunities, promoting future employment and preparing students as agile, competent, innovative and safe workers, who can work collaboratively to solve problems and complete project-based work in various contexts.

In Music in Practice, students are involved in making (composing and performing) and responding by exploring and engaging with music practices in class, school and the community. They gain practical, technical and listening skills and make choices to communicate through their music. Through music activities, students have opportunities to engage individually and in groups to express music ideas that serve purposes and contexts. This fosters creativity, helps students develop problem-solving skills, and heightens their imaginative, emotional, aesthetic, analytical and reflective experiences.

Students learn about workplace health and safety issues relevant to the music industry and effective work practices that foster a positive work ethic, the ability to work as part of a team, and project management skills. They are exposed to authentic music practices that reflect the real-world practices of composers, performers, and audiences. They learn to view the world from different perspectives, experiment with different ways of sharing ideas and feelings, gain confidence and self-esteem, and contribute to the social and cultural lives of their school and local community.

In Visual Arts in Practice, students respond to authentic, real-world stimulus (e.g. problems, events, stories, places, objects, the work of artists or artisans), seeing or making new links between art-making purposes and contexts. They explore visual language in combination with media, technologies and skills to make artworks. Throughout the course, students are exposed to art-making modes, selecting from 2D, 3D, digital (static) and time-based and using these in isolation or combination, as well as innovating new ways of working. 

When responding, students use analytical processes to identify problems and develop plans or designs for artworks. They use reasoning and decision-making to justify their choices, reflecting and evaluating on the success of their own and others’ art-making. When making, students demonstrate knowledge and understanding of visual features to communicate artistic intention. They develop competency with and independent selection of media, technologies and skills as they make experimental and resolved artworks, synthesising ideas developed throughout the responding phase. 

Learning is connected to relevant industry practice and opportunities, promoting future employment and preparing students as agile, competent, innovative and safe workers who can work collaboratively to solve problems and complete project-based work in various contexts.