Visual arts education provides opportunities for all students to perceive, respond to, and create and communicate through images, allowing them to experience and apply throughout their lives the power, ideas, and emotions expressed in visual images.

The visual arts:
• are fundamental to the development of individual potential, social responsibility,
and cultural awareness
• contribute to the intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, social, and physical
development of the individual
• foster respect for and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritages and values of
Canada and the world
• provide students with pleasure, enjoyment, and a deepened awareness of
themselves and their place in their environment, community, and culture

*Taken from the Visual Arts 8 to 10 IRP (BC Ministry of Education)