Although research unequivocally argues that creativity and quality arts experiences should be at the centre of education, this potential has yet to be realised in schools and other places of learning. This is the mission of the new Creativity in Research, Engaging the Arts, Transforming Education (CREATE) Centre.

To be launched by award-winning playwright and artistic director of the Sydney Festival, Wesley Enoch, later today, the Centre – which builds on more than a decade of in-house research and outreach – will be a hub of research, advocacy and action.

Led by Professor of Teacher Education and the Arts Robyn Ewing and Professor Michael Anderson, both of the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, it will emphasise the centrality of creativity and the arts – literary, performing, visual and media – to learning.

Institutions that will work in partnership with the CREATE Centre include Sydney Theatre Company; Diversity Arts; Bell Shakespeare; WestWords, Sydney Opera House; the NSW Art Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art; Milk Crate Theatre; Sydney Writer’s Festival; and a host of national and international schools and universities.

Such practitioners, as well as policymakers, will collaborate with Centre academics from a range of fields – education; performance studies; medicine and health; literature; art; business; music; and Indigenous language learning among them.