Made in Cirebon: Alternative Arts and Culture Education Model for Public School in Cooperation with Local Artists in Indonesia

Arts and culture education in public schools in Indonesia faces various challenges. The course hours and subjects are insufficient to cover diverse topics, and the number of teachers and their expertise are inadequate to deliver the relevant knowledge. As a result, alternative arts education has become a popular mode of education for the Indonesian students and it has been conducted by the private and government sectors. A number of artist collectives provide extracurricular art courses based on their artistic practice while the Indonesian government initiated the program for the local artists to teach the subject of their expertise in schools. ARCOLABS organized an alternative arts and culture education program for local public-school students in 2020 as part of the Arts and Culture Education ODA (Official Development Assistance) held in Indonesia. Titled Made in Cirebon, this program aims to promote the development of arts and culture education in local public schools through cooperation with local artists. Unlike the existing education model of the kind, this program focused the interdisciplinary approach by incorporating art, technology, ecology, and local context as part of the inclusive, educational activities of the program. Moreover, this program was beneficial for not just the students and school teachers, but the local artist community who learnt to become a mediator to carry on sustainable arts and culture education. By employing the blended learning based on online and offline method, this program has achieved the innovative and productive outcome and provided a vision for future education in the post-pandemic era.