This book explores the many dialogues that exist between the arts and literacy. It explores what is important to know and do in the arts and also what literacies are engaged in, through the journey to becoming an artist. The arts for the purpose of this volume include five art forms: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts.

Part I – Theorizing the arts and literacy.- 1. Literacy and the arts: Interpretation and expression of symbolic form.- 2. First literacies: Art, creativity, play, constructive meaning-making.- 3. Visual arts education and the formation of literacies: An exploration of visuality.- 4. Interfacing visual and verbal narrative art in paper and digital media: Recontextualising literature and literacies.- 5. Reflective practice in the arts.- Part II – Teaching and learning literacy in the arts. 6. Literacy and knowledge: classroom practice in the arts.- 7. Dance literacy: An embodied phenomena.- 8. Drama literacy: Indefinite articles.- 9. Developing media production skills for literacy in a primary school classroom: Digital materials, embodied knowledge and material contexts.- 10. Music literacies: Teaching diversity.- 11. Connect, transform, learn: Achieving visual literacy in the art classroom.- Part III – Diverse arts-literacy dialogues. 12. Improving literacy through the arts.- 13. Using visualisation and imagery to enhance reading comprehension.- 14. Musicking as literacy: possibilities and pragmatisms for literacies learning.- 15. Storytelling as an art literacy: Use of narrative structure in Aboriginal arts practice and performance.- 16. The arts and literacy, ‘amplified right’: Hearing and reading J.S. Bach.- 17. Encouraging productive arts-literacy dialogues: A call to action.

This book explores the many dialogues that exist between the arts and literacy. It shows how the arts are inherently multimodal and therefore interface regularly with literate practice in learning and teaching contexts. It asks the questions: What does literacy look like in the arts? And what does it mean to be arts literate? It explores what is important to know and do in the arts and also what literacies are engaged in, through the journey to becoming an artist. The arts for the purpose of this volume include five art forms: Dance, Drama, Media Arts, Music and Visual Arts. The book provides a more productive exploration of the arts-literacy relationship. It acknowledges that both the arts and literacy are open-textured concepts and notes how they accommodate each other, learn about, and from each other, and can potentially make education ‘better’. It is when the two stretch each other that we see an educationally productive dialogic relationship emerge.  “Literacy in the Arts: Retheorising Learning and Teaching presents a thought-provoking definition of arts literacy as multimodal that moves the conversation about the value of an arts education beyond the intrinsic versus instrumental debate, and into the realm of contemporary practice across arts disciplines. With chapters exploring arts literacy in traditional arts forms, new media, and creativity research, this volume will appeal to readers wishing to focus in on a specific arts discipline, or explore the concept of multimodality in arts literacy comprehensively.” Tracie Costantino, University of Georgia, Georgia, USA.

Highlights the unique relationship between the arts and literacy Provides examples of what literate practices are evident in arts classroom contexts from early years to higher education Theorises the arts and literacy around key points and concepts such as: creativity, multimodality, reflective practice, visual, aural and performative literacies Discusses ways that the arts improve literacy outcomes Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras