In the text —which is supported by more than 4,000 professors of all fields, citizenry on an individual basis and institutions— this university group refers to the importance of Art, Visual and Audiovisual Education for reaching a full, comprehensive and responsible with new generations education law, and recalls that these are aspects that need to be taken into account in the LOMLOE, the Organic Law Project that modifies the LOE (Spanish Organic Law of Education), passed by the Council of Ministers last 15 February, the draft bill of which has been recently published on the Ministry’s webpage http://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/destacados/lomloe.html and will be predictably passed by the executive early in March.

In the hope that the project could admit amendments before the definitive approval of the Law, professors of university degrees in Primary School Education, Preschool Education, Social Education and Fine Arts among others, together with numerous researchers, institutions, associations, cultural and political figures and the citizenry in general, who are joining this claim, have manifested their worry about the gradual reduction of the presence of art education in formal education, as it happened with the LOMCE (Spanish Organic Law for the Improvement of Educational Standards). For this reason, these professionals that formed a group as a field of knowledge that discuss the importance and the positive impact of art teaching in class in all its expressions, have considered that it is a turning point to take part in the public debate, since this law will modify next years the Spanish educative system. For this purpose, they ask the Government and the political parties that are represented in parliament to become aware of the positive impact that a greater presence of artistic, aesthetic, visual and audiovisual education would have on the education system, which is increasingly necessary to promote a critical, creative and full citizenship in their personal and social development, especially when it comes to a law that attempts to recover the spirit of the LOE. Furthermore, the statement has been submitted symbolically overlapping the opening of the Madrid International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO).

In this sense, the manifest of these professionals highlights that art is “one of the fundamental pillars of our societies. And all of us have to be able to enjoy it and we, as its creators, have to be many more,” and reminds “the value of the imagination, the aesthetic sense and the ability of communication” as pillars to “learn to be”, according to the report drafted by the work group of the Area of Art Expression Teaching for the Ministry of Education and Science in 2005, which suggests that it is a historical demand defending art teaching. This issue, according to the signatories of the text, transcends any political positioning and needs to become a space of consensus for all political parties.