The NSEAD ARAE Curriculum Checklist was created to aid art educators in various levels of teaching professions to critically review and revise their art, craft and design curriculums, set up by The Anti-Racist Art Education Action (ARAEA) Group was in July 2020 as part of The National Society for Education in Art & Design (NSEAD) to ensure their subject and all who engage in it, are actively anti-racist.
The Group has contributed a combination of lived expertise and voices collected from various individuals who work within school settings or councils to create the resource with the aim to support art educators in becoming and being actively anti-racist.
The checklist is designed in sections including: Diversity and Belonging, Cultural Capital and Criticality, Colonial Legacy, Context and Terminology; Intersectionality and Unconscious Bias. which are non-linear. The questions seek to encourage self, department and/or organisational reflection based around four key questions that hopefully lead to a critical engagement with the school resource under scrutiny. They cover ‘who’ is given space, ‘what’ is included, ‘how’ terminology is used and framed and a leading question that asks what else needs scrutiny in your setting?
"The killing of George Floyd in May 2020 was a wake-up call, a reminder of the systemic racism which threads through society at every level. As a learned society ourselves, NSEAD has a duty to keep learning and to be part of real change. We are aware that we need to do more, to challenge racism and recognise what it looks like in art, craft, and design education.” - NSEAD
Alongside the Curriculum Checklist, ARAEA also have a Publication & Resources Checklist for art educators authoring online content, publishing articles or research, and Schools Resources Checklist for educators working in art, craft and design departments in schools or colleges.
“Art and art education have a unique power to help us understand and challenge racism – they help us to question and understanding, with humility, what is means to be an anti-racist human. But we must also recognise the ways in which art, craft and design, and, we as educators, can perpetuate racism.” - ARAEA Group