Arts Education

Visual Arts

The Visual Arts Framework Butterfly

The Manitoba Visual Arts Framework philosophy, essential learning areas, and learning outcomes are represented graphically and metaphorically by the image of a butterfly.

As a graphic organizer, the butterfly image forms a diagram comprising five distinct and interconnected parts: the four wings that each connect to the fifth part, the main body in the centre. Each of the wings represents one of four essential learning areas into which the learning outcomes of the Visual Arts Framework have been classified. the central area or "body" of the butterfly, the part to which all the wings connect, represents the student as a young developing artist.

The butterfly image promotes the belief, integral to the Visual Arts Framework, that every student's growth as an artist and artistically literate person can be realized through ongoing learning experiences that connect creative artmaking activities, technical knowledge and skill development, the building and broadening of cultural and historical understandings related to art and life, and ongoing reflective and critical thinking opportunities that focus on art and personalized learning.

The butterfly also functions as a metaphor for art and art education, alluding to transformation, self-actualization, visual beauty, and resilience. the butterfly image may stimulate many other associations by those who encounter this Visual Arts Framework; such generative thinking is fitting for a framework intended as an impetus to creative and personalized learning.