Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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72. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will work with the Minister for Education to create a national strategy for the arts in schools, with dedicated funding, in order that all children and young persons may enjoy the benefits from participation and exposure to the arts. [47957/21]

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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The Creative Youth Plan was published by Government in December 2017 as one of the five pillars of the Creative Ireland Programme. It set out a range of measures designed to enable the creative potential of every young person, both within the formal education system and in community settings. While the Creative Youth Plan aims to promote engagement in creative activities in the broadest sense, it embraces amongst other things the arts as a mechanism through which children and young people can experience creativity.

Implementation of the Plan is led by my Department in partnership with the Department of Education, the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Arts Council. Significant progress on the delivery of its objectives has been achieved to date, and details are available from the Creative Ireland Programme website.

While Creative Youth is not specifically an Arts in Education strategy it does support a number of specific education-based initiatives which aim to provide greater opportunity to whole school communities to engage with all forms of creativity. It is worth noting that the Plan proposes a broader long-term objective – to help promote a society in which knowledge and creativity are equal partners in the formation of our young people and where schools can support creativity and innovation in teaching and learning in an integrated way.

Creative Schools, which is delivered by the Arts Council, supports schools to put arts and creativity at the heart of school life, supporting them to develop and implement their own creative plan, while strengthening the relationships between schools and the broader cultural and community infrastructure. The Creative Clusters Programme, a programme delivered by my colleague Minister Foley, enables groups of up to five schools to collaborate on an innovative arts and creative projects to address a common issue or challenge. Earlier this year Minister Foley also announced a new initiative, titled BLAST (Bringing Live Arts to Schools and Teachers), which will support up to 400 new artist residencies in schools each year.

In addition to these programmes, Creative Youth also supports Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programmes for teachers at both primary and post-primary. While the focus of this CPD is wider than arts, it encompasses the arts and endeavours to ensure that children and young people enjoy the benefits from participation and exposure to the arts and creative activities.

While my Department continues to support the Creative Youth initiatives, primary responsibility for engagement with the arts as part of the school curriculum rests with my colleague, Minister Foley.